Total Drama Space Station

by NumberOneKatieFan

In their most extravagant endeavor yet, the producers of Total Drama are sending Chris and Chef to a space station along with twenty-two of YOUR original characters! Finale Card courtesy of BadLuckAE(New episodes on Sundays and two new mini-episodes on Wednesdays!)

70. Galaxy Wide Battle

The Milky Way, our galaxy which we once thought as peaceful and silent, but now, knowing what occurred out there due to the actions of the twenty-two teenagers and their insane host, that thought had changed. Alien life, gladiatorial battles, defying the very laws of physics, all of these had flipped our idea of the Milky Way upside-down. Chris had his crew set up, what seemed to be, battleground type areas on every planet out there, going all the way from Mercury to Pluto. On Mercury, Belladonna wore a forest green space suit, one with had a pink flower on the chest. She scanned the area she was in, noting that it resembled something of a laser tag arena. On Venus, there was Jackson, who wore a grey and red striped space suit. His battleground was mountainous, having many platforms attached to the side of the mountains with checkpoints of sorts on them. Even Earth itself had a battleground, this one being guarded by Milly, though there was a lack of a space suit on her for obvious reasons. She, instead, wore a heavy black jacket, with a fluffy hood. She stood in a snowy landscape, one that had many tall trees throughout it.

Coming after Earth, there was Mars, which was currently in the midst of having many dust devils strike on the sandy battleground that Brittany guarded, wearing a hot pink space suit with gold lining on it. Then, there was Jupiter, which the contestants hadn't actually gotten to set foot on yet. Dana was there, wearing a space suit that was a mix of purple, blue, and black, with many stars speckled all over it. The battleground itself was in a stormy area, one that had many trenches that were full of mud. Going on, there was Saturn, the other planet that no one was able to visit. The person who guarded its battleground wasn't someone that was familiar to the contestants, not in the slightest. It was a tall man, one who wore a space suit with red legs, but everything else was tan. Rather than being on the planet itself, he was on a platform that floated about in its rings. Next up, Uranus, the icy planet that the group got to see quite some time ago. It's battleground was simple, just being a large ice rink of sorts. Mimi guarded it, happily humming a tune while she built a snowman nearby. She wore a white space suit with pink stripes.

The next battleground was quite threatening looking, being completely under the dangerous waters of Neptune that some of the contestants had a chance to encounter before. Chef swam in the waters, having on his own teal diving suit while he viewed the many mines floating around him. Finally, there was Pluto, which had a massive cage set up on it, one that really had an ominous feel about it. Within the cage, there was nobody...except for a purple alien dog that looked all too familiar. Chris, meanwhile, was still back on the space station, wearing his orange captain's space suit while leaning up against the teleporter in the dock room. He kept his helmet off for the time being, letting it rest in his hands so he could show off his obnoxious smile.

"Last time on Total Drama: Space Station," the host started, carrying that same tone he always had, "Archie, Gretchen, and Tony all found themselves tense while awaiting the final three challenge. It turns out, knowing that you have a one in three chance of getting the boot can really keep you worried, or throwing up in Gretchen's case. Though, I suppose I actually had a hand in that, heheh. Well, it was funny until she made me experience the worst motion sickness ever! Anyway, the challenge we introduced was really simple, though definitely more dangerous than most of the other ones we had done throughout the season. All three of them had to race to the finish on the asteroid belt, being careful not to fall off of the asteroids, lest they drop into a teleporter below and be brought all the way back to the beginning of the course! Tony found a good way to use our little booby traps to his advantage, and got a huge lead on the other two contestants, one who was having a bad tummy ache, and the other who got a face full of TNT. Ha, classic. Eventually, Tony and Archie met up with each other at the end of the course, and got into a wicked fight when Tony revealed just how much the money meant to him. Even though the conman easily overpowered the poet, he dropped the chance to take him out of the challenge when Gretchen found herself dangling over the void of space without a single teleporter beneath her! Not sure how that happened, but with his quick thinking, and the use of Archie as a grappling hook, he was able to save both Gretchen from death, and us from a lot of lawsuits. Unfortunately, he knew that his actions towards everyone else would be the end of him. Gretchen won the challenge, choosing to take Archie with her to the finale, but not without giving Tony an emotional send off. We're at the finale now, with only a poet and a rockstar left! Who will manage to take the victory and the five million dollars? Find out now on this expansive finale of Total Drama: Space Station!"

As the opening started, the Chris Space Station was revealed and quickly zoomed into, showing cameras all over the corridors and traveling through them to reach the captain's chambers, where Chris was lounging in his chair. He smirked an evil smirk as the camera flew by him, peering through the window to the outside.

"Dear mom and dad, I'm doing fine," Archie could be seen in his black space suit, trying to escape the clutches of one of the slimy, green aliens that had terrorized the contestants before.

"You guys are on my mind," suddenly, Gretchen floated up between the two, in her yellow space suit with a penny in hand, which she slapped against the alien's face, causing it to float away as the two contestants high fived.

"You asked me what I wanted to be, now I think the answer's plain to see," out of nowhere, an army of the green aliens appeared behind the two, causing them to start floating away as fast as they could.

"I wanna be famous," they managed to make it all the way to the mouth of the space station, passing through before it closed and running past Chef while the green alien's tackled him, all shoving posters of Benjamin in his space suit in his face.

"I wanna live close to the sun," as the two finalists ran through the dock, they eventually went into the teleporter, ending up on Mercury in the gladiator arena from before, and finding themselves in their gladiator armor.

"So, pack your bags, cause I've already won," they continued running, passing through another teleporter and ending up on Venus, with their space suits back, both of them sweating profusely from the dreadful heat.

"Everything to do, nothing in my way. I'll get there one day," going forward, despite the heat, they made their way through another teleporter, this one taking them to Mars, specifically on the race track from before, which they ran along until they went through another teleporter.

"I wanna be famous," this teleporter took them to the asteroid belt, which they had to skillfully jump across, avoiding falling to their doom until they passed through another teleporter.

"Na na na na na na na na na," now, they were underwater on Neptune, trying to swim away from an angry mother Neptuid as it chased after them, causing both of them to feel absolute terror.

"I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be famous," they managed to get above the water, popping through another teleporter and ending up on Pluto, at the end of the obstacle course, where they leapt off to go through one final teleporter.

"I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be famous," this teleporter brought them to the space station once again, specifically the cafeteria, where all of the other contestants, and the personnel from, the season, were awaiting them.

As the group whistled, Gretchen ran up to Liz, forcing her into a big hug while Tony laughed at his girlfriend's embarrassed expression. Likewise, Archie rushed over to Jianne, who hugged him tightly, the hug soon turning into a group hug as March and Damien both joined in, though unable to look at each other out of sheer awkwardness.

Finale day, something that both Archie and Gretchen had been worried about ever since Tony left the station. They knew that there was gonna be something big in store for them, but just what was it? What was Chris planning that was so devious, he couldn't even tell them a slightest bit about it? Gretchen thought about it as she kicked back in her room, strumming away on her guitar while trying to think about how to finish her song. She really wanted to have it done before the season came to a close, but with the finale being today, how would she be able to? She sighed before slamming her head against the wall in frustration.

"Man, this blows!" she whined, continuing to slam her head against the wall, "How am I supposed to be able to show my face to the others without a killer musical performance in mind? Ugh!"

She finally stopped slamming her head against the wall, but she still heard the bumping noise, as if she was still doing it. She raised an eyebrow in confusion, not sure what was going on, until she realized that the noise was coming from the door, rather than the wall.

"Eh? I guess that must be Chris or Chef or something, though usually they'd just call for us on the intercom or something. Hang on, I'll be right there."

She rose from her bed, placing her guitar back down on it before walking over to the door. She let out a deep breath, trying to lessen the worries that she currently had, and eventually grabbing the doorknob and twisting it open. Much to her surprise, the person in the doorway wasn't Chris or Chef. Rather than being a host, it was none other than Liz, who still had short hair, though it was a little longer now. Still, it failed to cover her eyes, and the mix of silver and blue stared up at her tall friend.

"What!?" Gretchen was taken aback, even falling down to the ground in shock, "You're- but you- what are you- eh!?"

"At a loss for words, I see," Liz smirked at her friend before pulling her up off the floor. "Yes, it is I! I've come back to watch you in the finale...and also because Chris told me to, but that's beside the point!"

"I can't believe this...I mean, I knew that they sometimes did this sort of thing, but I never expected you to come back here for this. That's awesome! I'm so happy to see you!"

"Well, that's to be expecte- hey!"

Suddenly, Gretchen scooped Liz off of the floor, pulling her into a tight hug whilst holding her in the air. Her face grew red with embarrassment, but she didn't force Gretchen to stop just yet.

"Okay, I get it. You missed me. But please, people are watching."

"Huh?" Gretchen was a little confused by what Liz had said, at least until she heard a boastful laugh that hadn't been gone for too long.

"Gretch, buddy!" Tony greeted the girl, waltzing on up to the two in his cocky walk. "Been a while...but then again, it really hasn't!"

"Haha, you're here too?"

"Don't sound too enthusiastic about it, yeesh. But it ain't just me and Liz, nah. The whole damn crew is back onboard for this shebang!"

"Woah, no way! Where is everyone?"

"Well, if you'd kindly step out of the room and into the hallway you'd see some more of your supporters."

"Supporters?"

Curious to so what the boy who was once her adversary meant, she stepped out of her room, seeing quite a few of the eliminated astronauts before here. Dusty leaned against the wall, nodding her head as she saw Gretchen, but quickly glaring at Tony and Liz. Taylor stood in front of most of the group, carrying her stereo on top of her should and blasting music from it loudly as Nicolás, who was standing next to her, covered his ears. Alexis smiled brightly to her friend as she stood behind Flint, who was still in his full body cast, and in addition to this, a wheelchair. Sebastian and Haley stood near the back of the crowd, neither of them looking all too enthusiastic about being there, but it was what it was. Lastly, there was Alex, who was reading a book on how to successfully befriend space monkeys.

"Woah!" Gretchen was even more shocked than before, and this time, she could feel a tear coming to her eye. "They really weren't playing around...I guess that means that all of the others are visiting Archie, then?"

"Not everyone," Alex piped up, "Vicente's found himself with some nasty guard duty of sorts, apparently that crazy lady that was up here with Thomas wants him to make sure the interns don't bug her while she does...whatever she does."

"Ah, that's not concerning at all..."

"Yo, dude!" Taylor shouted, approaching the rockstar and setting her stereo aside, "What's hanging!?"

"Uh, hey, Taylor. Heard you, uh...I dunno, said something about me before or whatever. I dunno, forget about it."

"Eh? Oh! Right! When I was on my way to the resort! Haha, I damn near forgot about that shit already, that's crazy that you knew! Wait a minute, how did you know about that?"

"Oh, you weren't even watching that episode, were you?" Nicolás asked the girl, gaining her attention for a moment. "Chef told her all about it. I think you were trying to beat Sebastian up or something when it happened."

"Oh...yeah, I remember that!"

"Yeah!" Sebastian piped up, gritting his teeth at her, "You're a real caveman sometimes, you know that!?"

"Relax, Seabass," Haley tried to calm him down, but per usual, it didn't really work. "Chris told us that we can't start a whole bunch of fights while we're here or he'll send us back to Earth."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Stupid Chris and his dumb rules. Things would be a lot different if I were in charge of this show."

"I'm so glad that he's on my side in this," Gretchen mumbled sarcastically, causing Liz to snicker. "By the way...what happened to Flint?"

"Well," Alexis rubbed the back of her head, trying not to get into to much detail, "Let's just say that Thomas was very excited to see him at the resort."

"Mmphr!" Flint uttered, though nobody understood what he was trying to say.

"Come on, Flint," Dusty spoke up, "The doctors said ya shouldn't be talking all too much or yer jaw's never gonna heal up right."

"Oh my god, that's horrible!" Gretchen finally let Liz back down on the ground, rushing over to Flint and getting down to eye level with him, "Do you need me to teach him a lesson? I can kick his ass real good!"

"There's no point," Taylor butted in, "A couple of us wanted to get to him, but he's always with that psycho girlfriend of his. The two of them make for a very unpleasant combination."

"You're telling me," Nicolás continued, "She pepper sprayed me for trying to screw with her plans, something which I didn't even know that I did!"

"Don't remind me. I'm still pissed off about that."

"Well, that blows," Gretchen grumbled before continuing to talk to Flint, "For what it's worth, all of us thought it was really awesome, what you did. I mean, hell, I didn't even know what was going on! You straight up thwarted an assassin and kept the whole thing under wraps. That takes some serious balls."

"Mphm!" Flint mumbled, his eyes appearing to be somewhat happy through the bandages.

"By the way," Liz tapped Gretchen's shoulder, grabbing her attention again, "Did you ever finish that one song you were working on?"

"Uh...well," the finalist stood up and looked up at the ceiling, avoiding eye contact, "I mean, I've been having a hard time coming up with the right words for it..."

"Oh, I get it. Us being gone has made it difficult to find inspi-"

The scientist was quickly cut off by a burst of shock from Gretchen.

"Your hair! What happened to your hair!"

"Oh...that. Well, you see-"

"She went bald when she spilled her own chemicals on her head," Dusty noted with a smirk upon her face, "She was trying to get Luna with 'em, but look how well that worked out for her."

"Hush, obnoxious cowgirl."

"Man, Liz," Gretchen shook her head in disappointment, "I told you to stop trying to mess with her, didn't I?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyways...don't worry about the whole song thing. I mean, you don't have to feel obligated to get it finished for our sake. It's not like we're just gonna up and leave you for dead."

"Leave me for dead...hm..."

"Maybe you just need to have a rush!" Taylor suggested, "We can totally go for a ride on my motorcycle, that'll be sure to get a groove going!"

"A rush? Adrenaline rush...hmmmmmm..."

"I think you guys are giving her ideas or something," Tony said, digging around in her room before coming out with her guitar. "You need to at least wait until she's got this with her. What good are ideas if you don't have anything to do with them?"

The conman tossed the guitar over to Gretchen, who happily caught it and positioned it to play, causing Nicolás to turn Taylor's stereo off, finally.

"I think I got an idea...just one...two...three..."

Upon finishing her count, she started to play her guitar, letting a simple, yet melodic tune escape the strings and get everyone's attention.

(Song Used - Adrenaline by Simple Creatures)

"I hear your voice in flashbacks

You act like it never happened

Dynamite and whiplash

Kill me with your favorite weapon

So happy anniversary

Now point the finger back at me

Brokenhearted surgery

You don't know what you do to me, do to me, do to me."

When she finished the first verse, the group was already shocked at how she managed to get all those words out without writing anything down. The expression on her face was one full of emotion, perhaps a mix of sadness and happiness from making it all the way to the end, but it was all tied together by the excitement and joy of being able to see everyone again. Her inspiration had come to her, finally. It was something that she had for some time before, but it had finally come back to her. The group watched attentively, not letting anything interrupt them from enjoying the free show.

"But I can feel you all the way from my coffin in LA

When I'm six feet underneath my misery

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me could you hit me

When I'm six feet underneath my misery

Come and hit me with adrenaline

Biting on a cigarette

Ditch me like a dirty habit

Run your mouth and lose your head

You're so idiosyncratic

But you're no Marie Antoinette

So save it for the Internet

I think we're failing to connect

You don't know what you do to me, do to me, do to me

But I can feel you all the way from my coffin in LA

When I'm six feet underneath my misery

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me could you hit me

When I'm six feet underneath my misery

Come and hit me with adrenaline

But I can feel you all the way from my coffin in LA

When I'm six feet underneath my misery

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me could you hit me

When I'm six feet underneath my misery

Come and hit me with adrenaline

Come on hit me with adrenaline

Hit me with adrenaline."

She finally finished her song, completing the entire thing in one go and letting out a deep, exhausted breath soon after. Looking up from her guitar, she could see the shocked expressions on everyone's faces, and she waited to hear what they thought about it.

"W-well?" she asked, glancing from face to face, "Was that okay?"

"Are you kidding me!?" Taylor blurted out, rushing over and grabbing her shoulders before pulling her close enough to stare directly into her eyes. "That was badass! 'Was that okay?' Pfft, that was way cooler than just okay!"

"Taylor, you don't really need to yell at her, you know," Alexis mentioned, though she was ignored.

"You gotta get me a copy of your album when it comes out! I'm gonna be playing that shit on repeat, that's for damn sure!"

"Come on, it wasn't that great," Gretchen blushed from embarrassment.

"Actually," Liz butted in, having a look of excitement on her own face, "It was pretty great. Though, that should be expected from someone as talented as you."

"You guys are so sweet..."

"Now, now, Gretch," Tony patted her on the back as Taylor refused to let go of her, "You can't get all mushy before the big show. You got a finale challenge to be winning, remember?"

"Well, with all of you supporting me, it would be hard for me not to win this thing! I'm gonna be so pumped the entire time!"

"Yeah, that's the enthusiasm we love to hear!"

"Chris is down in the lobby," Nicolás pointed out, "Said we were supposed to get you. I completely forgot about that until now."

"Oh, snap!" Gretchen grabbed her guitar and ran back to her room, with Taylor finally letting her go.

She put the guitar back in its case before closing it up and giving it a good luck pat. She ran back out to the others with a confident look on her face, everyone else sharing in her joy.

"I promise you guys, I'm not gonna let you down!"

The group cheered for the girl as she took lead of them and started towards the lobby, with each of them following behind her.

Confessional

"I can't believe that all I needed was some encouragement," Gretchen said, absolutely dumbfounded by how easy it all was, "I wish I had known that earlier! Then again, maybe this moment wouldn't have been so sweet if I just expected to be encouraged the whole time. Bah, whatever! That was awesome, and a whole bunch of people got to hear it!"

"She's so hot!" Taylor shouted, clearly not ashamed to let people know what she was thinking, "I mean, come on! The hair, the spunk, the guitar playing, woah mama! Though...I'm not sure what I should do from here. I feel like asking her out would probably steal her spotlight. I dunno!"

Confessional End

On the other side of the station, Archie lay in his bed, thinking about what to put on the final page of his poetry book, having a bit of a hard time doing so. He held his pen in one hand, with the book in the other, and stared at it blankly, just thinking about what it could be. He had absolutely no idea that the losers of the season were on board the station, not being present for Gretchen's little performance. As he thought to himself, the door suddenly swung open, without a knock or anything to accompany it. He turned his attention to the doorway, noticing that Jianne was there, just marching on in as if she owned the place.

"Sup," she greeted him, not bothering to explain herself before leaning against his bed frame. "What're ya up to?"

"You...what?" Archie found himself at a loss for words, just like his co-finalist, "What are you...huh?"

"What? Chris didn't tell you about this?"

"I don't know what's going on..."

"Silly Archie. Chris brought all of us losers back up here to watch the finale and everything. Said it would make for some killer ratings or something, you know?"

"All of you? So...March and Damien are here, too?"

"Yeah, they're around here somewhere. Not quite sure where, though. I kinda ran ahead of the group, didn't wanna listen to Chris's rules and all that junk. I was more interested in coming to chill with you for a moment, you know?"

"Uh...yeah."

The boy stood from his bed, setting the pen and book down before walking over to Jianne, who looked up at him happily.

"You really made it all the way, huh? Pretty rad if you ask me- woah!"

He suddenly pulled her into a tight hug, being overwhelmed by the happiness of getting to see her before the show was over. She rolled her eyes, patting him on the back as he held her, chuckling a little.

"I take it you missed me?"

"...Yeah. It's been boring without you."

"Are you kidding me? I've been watching each episode, you guys have been doing some crazy shit since I left!"

"Yeah...but it wasn't as fun without you around."

"Okay, enough with the sweet talk. Don't you wanna see your friends?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Well, come on, bud! Let's go!"

The hug broke, but Jianne took his hand in hers, pulling him along with her as she left the room, being greeted by many familiar faces in the hall. Anne and Natt stood off to the side, with the comedian pulling the string on a massive confetti popper, causing confetti to get literally everywhere and on everyone. Her boyfriend rolled his eyes at her, patting her on the head soon after. Damien rushed over to Archie, pulling him in for a hug while his crony, Benjamin, stood still with a cake in his hands that said "Happy Birthday" on it. Luna and March stood together, holding each other's hands and waving at Archie happily with their free hands. Crustacean stood at the back of the group, and like how Sebastian was for Gretchen, she wasn't all too thrilled to be there.

"Archie, you really made it," Damien cheered as he continued to hug his friend, "It's been awesome to watch you kick butt for this whole season, man."

"Ah, well...I couldn't have done it without the boost from all of you guys," the finalist felt comfort in seeing all of his friends with him again.

"You can't give us all the credit," Natt added, "You did a lot of this on your own, we were just along for the ride."

"Sureeeeee," Crustacean said sarcastically, "He totally didn't get a bunch of help to get here."

"Must you always be so pessimistic?" Anne asked, shooting a glare at her.

"Eh?" Benjamin suddenly gained a look of confusion, not sure what the comedian meant by that, "But Crustacean's not a pepperoni..."

"Benjamin, what?" Luna looked at him in that same confusion, "That's not even close to what she said."

"It's best not to question it," March told Luna, shaking her head in disappointment, "You're just gonna give yourself a headache that way."

"I can't believe it," Archie continued, finally being freed from Damien's grasp and flashing the group his overwhelmed expression, "You're all back here for me...That's so awesome..."

"Hey, man," Natt went on, approaching him to pat him on the shoulder, "Don't let yourself get too excited about this. You need to be at your best for the finale, yeah?"

"Yeah, I do...you're right."

"I saw you using the pen I got you," Jianne said with a smirk, causing Archie to blush a little, "Is it good? What am I saying, of course it's good. I bought it after all."

"Well, yeah. I've only got one page left in my book, too."

"Oh!" Anne piped up, suddenly intrigued by what the finalist had said, "Whatcha gonna put on it? Are you gonna go out with a bang and make it super exciting? Or is it gonna be somber, with hints of sweet to show that the journey is closing, but on a good note?"

"I'm not sure, I've been staring at the blank page for a while now. I may need to actually finish this thing before I go and use it."

"That's okay!" March chirped happily, "Don't rush yourself or anything! Take all the time you need!"

"Yeah," Damien butted in awkwardly, "What uh...what she said..."

"Oh, dear," Luna put her hands on her faced, growing annoyed with Damien, "Not this again..."

"What? I didn't do anything...I was simply agreeing with...her."

"Why do you have to say it like she's the scum of the Earth? She told you she was sorry already."

"I never said she was the scum of the Earth."

March looked down at the floor, her face full of shame as both Luna and Damien bickered with each other. Meanwhile, Archie wasn't sure of what to think about the whole situation, having not been present to see how upset Damien was before this. Jianne grabbed him from behind, wrapping her arms around his stomach and squeezing him tightly.

"Don't worry about them," she said, trying to keep his spirits high, "They're gonna be doing this no matter what. If it gets too bad, I'll go ahead and knock 'em out so they can't bother you."

"I don't know if that's the best solution to this problem," Archie mumbled, looking worried for his friends.

"Attention other finalist and all other losers!" Chris's voice called over the speakers stopping the bickering that was going on, "I know you're enjoying your long-awaited reconnection with your friends, but unfortunately for you, Gretchen's already down here and we've got a challenge to get to! And let me tell ya, it's a doozy! So...uh...yeah! Come on down to the main lobby to meet me for a little speech-giving and debriefing!"

His voice cut off and Jianne let go of Archie, though she grabbed his hand soon after, tugging him along with her as she stomped forward through the crowd.

"Come on, Archie!" she shouted over the murmuring of the group, "Let's get you down to the lobby so you can whoop Gretchen's butt! Not literally, but you know what I mean!"

"Yeah, I get it," Archie couldn't help but blush as Jianne held his hand, still amazed at the fact that one of the girls here actually liked him like she did.

Confessional

"They're all back here," Archie started, tears of joy in his eyes, "I mean, I never expected this to happen, but with someone as wild as Chris, you can never be certain. He just kinda does things how he wants. But I gotta say...usually he's obnoxious, but this? This was really nice. Thanks Chris."

"I didn't want to cheer for anybody!" Crustacean argued, still looking annoyed about being outed the way she was, "I should be in this finale, dammit! It's all that Tony's fault...he...ugh!"

Confessional End

While the second group finally started on their way down to the lobby, Maggie and Thomas could be seen together in Chef's room, the former tapping away on her laptop while sitting on the bed. The boy stood with his back to the door, preventing anyone from breaking into the room while they did their business. He was still a little unsure about what Maggie was up to, and his curiosity was getting the best of him quickly.

"I gotta ask," the assassin spoke up, though Maggie didn't turn her attention from the computer in front of her, "What is it that we're doing exactly? I mean, you said they we had something important to do, but all you've been doing is typing on your computer. Is this it? Are you writing something, or is there more to what you're doing."

"If you must know," she started, still focused on the screen, "I'm currently trying to gain access to the security cameras in the space suits. Checking on the astronauts that are standing guard, right now. Kuku, I see cute lil' Dana on Jupiter. She's probably bored out of her mind right now."

"Why do you need to do that? Are you worried that something's gonna happen to her or some shit like that? She'll probably be fine."

"No, I'm not worried about that, I'm worried about what someone else will do. There is a man on one of the battlegrounds, goes by the name 'Harry Jett.'"

"Okay...and? What's so important about that?"

"It's a fake name, of course. He caused some catastrophic events a couple of months ago on Cali-Tokyo, that little manmade island I was telling you about."

"Catastrophic events? Pfft, like what? He blew it up with an atomic bomb?"

Thomas laughed at the ridiculousness of the thought, though Maggie's serious expression didn't change.

"Actually, yes. I'm not sure how he escaped the island, he was trapped inside a giant robot with the bomb just seconds before it went off and destroyed the island. Chris wouldn't tell me all too much about him, but I think he's been up to something with the teleporters that everyone has been using."

"What do you mean? What could he possibly do with them?"

"My guess? He made the teleporters, and that's how he escaped the island before. He then got his face changed drastically to hide his true appearance, and found out about this season. He has some history with Dana, and he wants her dead. So, I'm assuming that he's trying to figure out how to get at her in the midst of this challenge's chaos."

"You really think that this dude got plastic surgery to hide his appearance? That seems like a waste of time to me."

"It wouldn't be the first time he's done it. He went by the name Garett Hearth before, took up the mantle of a famous soul singer before we figured out who he truly was. Now, he's Harry Jett, esteemed inventor. Truly, both of those names are quite close to his real one. He lacks in the naming department, he's making it too easy to figure him out."

"Ugh...this guy sounds like a real piece of work. What do you plan to do once you get into his security camera, though? I mean, we're stuck here on the space station, there's not much you can do to stop him."

"Let me in on something quite funny. This dude has a god complex, a real bad one. Last time he was thwarted, it was at the hands of some of the contestants in Mega Mechas. Do you have any idea how badly his pride will be hurt if we let that happen again?"

"So...you're gonna tell Archie and Gretchen to fight the dude in the middle of the challenge?"

"Well, I should've mentioned that they won't be alone in this. Chris is giving them some help...two helpers each, actually. I'll be able to talk to them through my laptop and guide them through this assault."

"All this for what? What's so important to you that you drop everything to go mess with this guy?"

"Why, Dana, of course! She doesn't deserve to be in this mess, it's all her father's fault. But that, is a story for another day."

"Interesting."

Thomas looked away from the computer and Maggie, staring up at the ceiling in boredom.

"Hey, Thomas?"

"What?"

"Peh, thanks for helping me!"

"...Don't mention it. You scratched my back, I'll scratch yours. That sorta deal is what we've got going on."

"I'm sure that'll change soon enough."

"Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?"

"Because I loooooooooove you!"

"Eh? Still on that, huh? You've got all the losers out there thinking that we're dating, too. You're really strange, crazy."

Maggie giggle to herself, as if pestering Thomas brought her a different kind of joy than what she was used to. He simply rolled his eyes, not as annoyed as he was with her previous advances, though still uncertain about what he should do in response. Meanwhile, Vicente found himself chasing down the two former interns as they ran all about the space station, specifically in the basement that they used to live in. He held a foam bat in his hands as he ran after them, bearing the most annoyed expression that he could possibly have.

"Get back here, you nincompoops!" he shouted as he chased them down, only for both of them to turn their heads and stick their tongues out at him.

"Never!" Amelia yelled, "We don't need a babysitter, we're perfectly capable of behaving ourselves on our own!"

"Yeah!" Zachary joined in, "And you're super lame, if you ask me-"

Without paying attention to where they were running, the two found themselves running right into the basement wall, falling to the ground soon after. Vicente shook his head in disappointment, walking over to the two and tossing the bat away before grabbing them both by the shirts and dragging them behind him.

"This is so not fair," Amelia pouted as she was dragged along, "We used to live up here, we don't need to be treated like a bunch of toddlers."

"Well, I'm being payed to keep you in check, so you must've pissed someone off enough to make them think you act like a damn toddler," Vicente mumbled.

"People just can't handle a duo as famous as us," Zachary noted, a smirk seated upon his face, "They want us out of the picture because they know we're gonna steal the show!"

"Is that right?"

"Yeah, we're superstars!"

"Then surely you could handle sitting tight for a couple hours? I mean, you don't want to make your fans think you're a bunch of children, do you?"

"Erp, our fans?" Amelia's eyes started glistening at the thought, "Ah, yes, our fans! Hello, loving fans! Why, yes! I am the real Amelia Meadows!"

As the girl continued to pretend speak to her fans that weren't there, Zachary looked over at her with a look of second-hand embarrassment. Vicente snickered to himself, pulling the two up the stairs with him.

Confessional

"I can see why Maggie told me to keep an eye on them," Vicente mumbled in annoyance, "Man, they are really annoying! I can't imagine why they're wasting their time on a show like this anyways. If you're actually famous actors, why don't you go audition for a movie or something? What do you need with Total Drama?"

Confessional End

Archie and his followers made it down to the lobby, where Chris and the others were waiting for them. There were two sets of risers, one on each side of the room. One of them was full of Gretchen's supporters, and, oddly enough, had a picture of her face on it. The other had a picture of Archie's face on it, and it didn't take long for him to understand what they were for. Jianne tugged on his shirt, grabbing his attention.

"Yo," she started, blushing ever so slightly while averting eye contact, "They're gonna have us sit over there while you two are doing your challenge, so...good luck."

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek before rushing over to the seats, with the others following behind her. Damien patted him on the back as he passed him by, an act which Benjamin copied, but a lot harder. The weak-brained boy patted him on the back so hard that he fell to the floor, but he was quick to help him up from the ground. March and Luna gave him a quick hug, eventually running over to the risers with the others. Natt gave the boy a fist bump as he passed on by, which was succeeded by a horn honk to the face from Anne, who giggled as she bounced over to join the others. Crustacean didn't even bother looking at him, she simply walked by, but this didn't shock anybody. Once all of his supporters had sat down, he moved forward to stand next to Gretchen, who smirked at him.

"You ready for this, Archie?" the rockstar asked, sounding sure of herself, "I'm not going easy on you, I can just let you know that now!"

"And neither am I," Archie replied with his own smirk, "May the best one win."

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Chris shouted above everybody, bearing the hostliness that he usually had. "It's been a long journey to get to this point, but finally, we sit here to watch our two finalists go head to head in the finale of the century! Archie and Gretchen have both worked hard to get to this point, and I'd say that deserves a round of applause, wouldn't you?"

As if on cue, all the fallen contestants in the risers, except for Crustacean, started to applaud the two finalists, who each blushed from the amount of support that they were getting. Chris then dismissed the applause, going on with his bit.

"It's kind of like a tradition to do a speech when you've made it this far, so let's get started in alphabetical order. Archie, get your butt on over here!"

"Yeah, go Archie!" Damien cheered as his friend walked over to where Chris was.

The poet turned to face everyone else, feeling a little unsure about what he should say. He swallowed his nervousness and took in a deep breath before letting his words out.

"Ahem, hello," he started awkwardly, still not used to having so many people support him, "I never really imagined myself getting to this point, so I don't really know what to say. All that really comes to mind is thanking you guys...I mean, for sticking with me through this season. It really was rough on all of us, but being able to go through the worst of each situation with all of you really made things seem a lot better than they could've been. Thanks, guys...you're all the best."

"That's so sweet!" March shouted out to her friend, tears pouring down from her eyes, "We love you, Archie!"

"Rock on, man," Natt gave Archie a thumbs up as he headed back to where he was standing before.

"Short and sweet, I like it," Chris said appreciatively, "Alright, Gretchen, it's your turn!"

"Woohoo!" Taylor cheered loudly, startling Nicolás, who was seated next to her, "Let's go!"

Gretchen ran over to Chris, turning to face everyone with a look of confidence on her face. She raised her fists in the air excitedly, encouraging each of her followers to do the same.

"What the hell is up, everybody!?" she shouted, causing Chris to take a step back to avoid the loudness. "I know, I know, it's gonna be tough to follow a speech as sweet as what Archie just did, but regardless, I need to keep you all entertained, right? Well, this has been a crazy season. We literally went from shooting each other with slime to racing along the asteroid belt, how crazy is that!? I'm not gonna stop here, though, I'm gonna go all out tonight, and so is my opponent, and we will keep you all entertained! Rock on, everybody!"

"Hell yeah!" Tony cheered, clapping his hands loudly, "Now that's how you hype up a crowd!"

"You hear that Seabass?" Haley nudged her boyfriend, "She says this is gonna be exciting, isn't that cool?"

"Bah, whatever," Sebastian rolled his eyes, "We coulda been there, you know."

"Give yer whining a rest, would ya?" Dusty punched the boy in the shoulder, "This is why nobody likes ya."

Gretchen returned to where Archie was standing, and the two fist bumped each other while Chris returned to his spot. The host cleared his throat, and a giant screen descended from the ceiling, one which had all the faces of the fallen contestants on it, every single on of them. This immediately intrigued the groups that were seated, and Chris smirked as they looked at it.

"Now, you're all probably wondering what's going on with this screen, right?" Chris chuckled, "You're probably like 'Ah! He's got my face on there, he's gonna do something horrible to me!' Well, you're only right if you think that helping a finalist is horrible. That's right, at the press of a button, a random contestant on this screen will be selected, and they'll have to help whichever finalist pressed the button. Each of you gets two helpers for this final challenge, so why don't you go first Archie?"

Chris tossed a remote with one big button on it over to Archie, who caught and looked over at his supporters to see most of them giving him a thumbs up. He let out a deep breath before pressing the button, which caused an arrow to pop up on the screen, cycling over each of the contestants on the screen. It passed over everyone several times before starting to slow down, and eventually, it stopped on...

"Oh, me huh?" Natt rose from his seat, kissing Anne on the forehead before heading over to a relieved Archie, "Guess you got me for this one, let's kick this challenge's ass."

"Yeah, Natt!" Anne cheered, "You two've got this!"

"Thank goodness," Archie said, relieved, "I was hoping for one of you guys...now, just to get the other helper..."

The boy pressed the button again, causing the arrow to start cycling again, this time with Natt's picture greyed out. It kept going and going, seeming to cycle even longer than the first one, and not starting to slow for quite some time. Archie felt a nervous sweat forming on his forehead while waiting for it to stop, and when it eventually did, he had a look of shock appear on his face, as well as on Natt and his other supporters' faces.

"Me?" Sebastian stood from his seat, rolling his eyes, "I mean, fine. I'll help you, I guess."

The boy started towards Archie and Natt, with Jianne glaring at him all the while. He flipped her off as he stood next to Archie, causing the finalist to let out an annoyed sigh in response.

"You're not gonna screw this up for him, are you?" Natt leered at Sebastian, who rolled his eyes once again.

"Relax, I ain't gonna do nothing stupid. But if you two bug the crap out of me, I just might!"

"Great, just great," Archie mumbled as he stared down at the floor.

"I swear, Sebastian," Jianne called over from the seats, "I'll kick your ass if you screw this up for him!"

"Would you not get your titties in a twist? I said I'm not gonna do stupid shit, god. You people are annoying."

"Well this is an interesting pairing," Chris snickered as he looked at Archie's dismay, "Hey, Shakespeare! Why don't you toss that remote on over to Gretchen so we can get the show on the road, yeah?"

"Yeah," Archie continued to mumble as he tossed Gretchen the remote, who caught it with a grin.

"Alright, let's see here," Gretchen spoke quietly to herself as she pressed the button.

She watched the screen as the arrow cycled over each of the contestants on it, with both Natt and Sebastian greyed out entirely. It started to slow down, passing by Flint, Haley, Jianne, and finally landing on...

"Well, that's curious," Liz stood from her seat, smirking at Gretchen, "You and I are gonna show those boys how it's done."

"Hell yeah!" Gretchen cheered as Liz skipped over to her, causing Sebastian to raise his hand.

"Uh, what do you want, dude?" Chris asked, annoyed by the gesture.

"I'd like to make an objection!" Sebastian blurted out, causing Archie to plant his palm on his face, "The person in that picture has long hair, and the person who is standing next to Gretchen has short hair. I don't think they're the same person, so she should probably press the button and get a different partner."

"You're an idiot," Liz hissed.

"Yeah, I'll give you props for trying to change my mind, but it ain't happening," Chris replied, "Go on, Gretchen, choose your second helper!"

"Welp," Sebastian backed down, "I tried."

Gretchen rolled her eyes as she pressed the button again, this time noticing that there were three greyed out faces. There were still seventeen other contestants to choose from, but it felt like any one of them could be someone that would screw the whole thing up. It eventually started to slow down, everyone watching eagerly to see how the results came out, only for it to land on...

"Eh?" Damien pointed to himself, taken back a little, "I'm helping the other finalist...oh, man. Sorry, Archie."

The boy started towards Gretchen, patting Archie on the back as he passed him by. He joined the two girls, who felt a little unsure about having their opponent's best friend on their team.

"It's cool, guys. I'm gonna help you with this challenge, I got picked fair and square after all."

"That's a relief," Gretchen let out a sigh, "Poor Archie's stuck with Sebastian, so honestly the bar couldn't get much lower for helpers, anyways. Besides maybe Crustacean.

"Hey, you watch it!" Crustacean hissed, "I'll kick the crap out of you!"

Gretchen tossed the remote back over to Chris, who caught it with a smirk as the screen rose back up into the ceiling. Immediately after, he threw some objects at the groups, startling them all as they caught them. Archie and Gretchen were each hand a silver, cylindrical object, each with a button on them. They pressed the buttons, causing a green beam of light to emerge from Gretchen's while a red one emerged from Archie's. Sebastian and Liz each got strange looking blasters, and upon inspecting his, Sebastian caused it to fire off a laser into the wall, shocking himself and his team. Natt and Damien each got a strange key, one that they were entirely unfamiliar with and had never seen before.

"I'm gonna get straight to the point here," Chris spoke up again, "Your last challenge isn't going to be an easy one, not in the slightest. You guys'll be working together in your teams...going to every planet in the Milky Way and facing off in different battles, fighting to get the best of nine! That's right, this challenge will have you all over the galaxy, and whoever gets five of the battles in the bag, will win the grand prize of five million dollars! Natt and Damien, you two are the pilots for your teams! Your job is to use that key to take control of the ships we've left on each planet, using them to get your team either closer to the battleground, or to make things more difficult for the enemy! Yep, they totally come equipped with some sick weaponry. Liz and Sebastian will be your marksmen! They come equipped with a laser blaster, as you've seen. Now, what does the blaster do? It paralyzes people for five seconds at a time! Pretty nifty if you ask me! That just leaves our finalists, Gretchen and Archie. You two are the saber masters, meaning you carry the strongest tool of all. Those weapons you've got with you can deflect any and all projectiles coming towards you if aimed right, and they will come back to you when thrown. Oddly, they make for a better blunt weapon than a blade, so hitting someone with it is gonna leave a mad bruise. Everybody clear on what their role is?"

The six of them mumbled while the fallen contestants watched in awe.

"Now, you're all gonna wanna get your space suits on for this challenge, it's gonna be a bit of a problem if you go out onto some other planet without any oxygen. Go, go, go!"

Upon him starting to yell at the six, they all scrambled to find their space suits while he snickered at them.

Confessional

"This seems pretty dangerous," Sebastian started, inspecting his laser gun, "And I love it! We're so gonna kick the other team's ass in this challenge!"

"Paralysis, hm?" Liz looked at her gun with wary eyes, "What is it with these shows and paralysis? Come up with a new way to incapacitate me or something, yeesh."

"I get to fly the ships in this challenge," Natt mumbled, his eyes a little more lit up than usual, "This is gonna be so cool...getting to soar through space in a battleship. Sick."

"Flying these ships seems like it'll be kinda dangerous," Damien muttered, "I wanna be useful...but I definitely don't wanna die in this challenge."

"The finale is one massive reference, that's hilarious!" Gretchen slapped her knee, "We're literally just doing a challenge based on Sta-"

"The stakes are really high in this one," Archie let out another deep breath, "Everything is riding on this...and of all people I could've gotten on my team, I ended up with Sebastian...great."

Confessional End

When the six had made it back to the lobby, they were all fully suited up and ready to go. They stood in their teams of three, with all of their supporters watching them from the sidelines. Chris was in his own space suit, waiting by the door to the dock room while a tv screen descended from the ceiling again, this time seating itself in a position that all the supporters could watch it from.

"Alright, finalists, are you ready?" Chris asked, opening the door to the dock room for all of them to walk through.

"We're ready," Gretchen and Archie said in unison.

"Wonderful! Just come along through this door and we'll get you on your way to your first challenge. Remember: you won't know exactly what to do on a planet until you get to the guardian of the battleground. Luckily, the ships have gps, so they'll guide you to your destination. Without further ado, let's get this started!"

Chris went through the door, the six competitors each following in suit while waving back to the other fallen contestants. Each of them approached the teleporter, one which they had become all too familiar with throughout the season. Chris was the first to go through it, with the others following behind soon enough. Once they arrived at their destination, they found it to be an incredibly snowy and icy landscape, one which made Sebastian cringe. He could recognize this planet as the one that led to his elimination, and it pissed him off.

"Well, it looks like we've ended up on Uranus!" Chris clapped his hands slowly, "What a good first destination...oh, I probably should've told you: the planet order is completely randomized! You'll both end up at the same planet at the same time, but it won't be following a linear pattern whatsoever. With that in mind..."

Chris pointed over to two large ships, ones that were somewhat disc shaped, with blasters galore attached to them.

"There's your ships for this planet. They'll always be right near the teleporter. Good luck to you guys, I gotta go back to the station to make sure nobody causes any issues. See ya!"

The host dashed back through the teleporter, which shut off immediately after, leaving the two groups stuck on the planet. They all glanced at each other, feeling a rising tension as they just stood around, doing nothing.

"Well," Liz spoke up, "I suppose we should start going, then?"

"Haha, yeah!" Sebastian said in an unusual cheery tone before blasting Damien with his laser gun, causing him to fall into the snow, shocking Gretchen and Liz, "Five second headstart, let's go boys!"

The boy grabbed his two teammates by the arms, pulling them along with him as he ran towards the ship, leaving Gretchen and Liz to help pick Damien up off the ground. By the time the boys had entered their ship, Damien was just starting to come back from his temporary paralysis, shaking himself off.

"Ugh, that scumbag!" Gretchen growled, "Come on, we gotta get to the ship before they get a lead on us!"

"Erk, yeah," Damien groaned, following the girls as they started running towards their ship.

Archie's ship started its takeoff while Gretchen's team was just entering theirs, and inside it, Sebastian was laughing hysterically, despite Archie and Natt both glaring at him.

"That was a dick move," Archie mumbled.

"Yeah?" Sebastian scoffed, "Do you wanna win this thing, or do you wanna let them get ahead of us?"

"Still, you didn't have to shoot him that soon," Natt spoke up.

"And you don't have to be talking to us right now. Shouldn't you be trying to figure out how to fly this thing?"

"Whatever, it can't be that hard."

As Natt fiddled around with the controls for the ship, it suddenly did a barrel roll, causing Sebastian, who was entirely unbuckled in his seat, to hit the ceiling of the ship before crashing back down into his seat. Archie and Natt couldn't help but laugh at the boy getting injured. Sebastian shook his dazed self off before finally buckling himself into the seat while Natt stared down at the gps system in front of him.

"Alright, it looks like it's a couple clicks North of us," the pilot called back to his team.

"Ey, try not to kill us on the way," Sebastian growled. "I'm really gonna mess your face up for this, man."

"Shove a cork in it," Archie hissed.

Sebastian rolled his eyes at his teammates while Natt darted off in the ship, going a lot faster than he expected to in his ship. Meanwhile, in Gretchen's, Damien was taking things very slow, from the studying of the buttons to the initial takeoff. Liz tapped her feet on the floor as she sat in her seat, wanting him to pick up the pace while Gretchen reclined in her seat and whistled.

"You know, you're practically handing Archie the win if you keep going this slow," Liz grumbled, "Get a move on!"

"I'm just making sure we're safe!" Damien replied, sounding as nervous as could possibly be, "Do you wanna crash and die in this thing?"

"Hey, let's all be friendly, you two," Gretchen butted in, "The last thing we need if for you guys to start fighting with each other."

"Gretchen's right," Liz rolled her eyes, "Fine, sorry."

"Now...just to figure out how to get this thing in gear...hmmm...maybe this button?"

Damien pressed a red button, which cause the ship to start bursting off into the distance, passing by the other ship along the way and startling all of the people within it. Liz and Gretchen started screaming as the ship went as fast as it could possibly go, while Damien felt exhilarated by the experience. They eventually came to a halt above some massive ice rink, and the ship automatically descended to the side of it, crashing down on a snowman and destroy it. The door to the ship opened up, and a dazed Liz and Gretchen came out into the open, leaving Damien inside.

"I'll take care of the air support from here!" the boy exclaimed, "This is so exciting, haha!"

The door closed back up, and the ship rose back up into the sky, with the other ship soon coming down to the ground, landing on the destroyed snowman. Archie and Sebastian both came out of it, the latter glaring at the opponents before them while Natt took back off into the sky.

"Well, well!" Liz started in a mocking tone, "Look who finally decided to show up!"

"Oh, save it," Sebastian grumbled, "Let's get the challenge started so we can beat the crap out you two."

As the two helpers bickered between each other and the finalists looked away in secondhand embarrassment, Mimi approached them, looking at her destroyed snowman in sadness.

"Aw," she pouted, "I worked really hard on that..."

"You again!?" Liz was taken aback, "What are you doing here!?"

"I'm the guard for this battlethingy...and that was my snowman...he's dead now..."

"Oh, great going, Gretchen," Sebastian leered at the finalist.

"Hey, I wasn't the one who was piloting the damn ship!" Gretchen growled, "Okay, whatever. Mimi, we're sorry we destroyed your snowman, it was an accident, I promise."

"Really?" Mimi looked up at Gretchen from the broken snowman.

"Yep," Archie added, "Those ships are way too crazy for us to pilot. They've got minds of their own."

"Well...okay! Oh! I'm supposed to tell you all about the challenge for this planet! Right, so, you see that gigantic ice rink over there?"

Mimi gestured to the ice rink, though it was impossible to miss it. Upon inspecting it closer, the four noticed that there was a flag in the center of it, as well as dangerous looking ramps and spikes all over it.

"So, you guys each have to go to the start of the rink and then you start heading for that flag, yeah? Whoever grabs it doesn't just win, though, you need to make it all the way to the finish. That means that even if you manage to nab it, the other team could always take it back from you. Pretty self explanatory, right?"

"Uh...yeah," Archie gulped as he looked over the rink again, seeing the dangers that waited for them. "We really have to go through all of that?"

"Yup! It'll be fun, I promise! I've done it a couple times already!"

Archie and Sebastian shared a worried glance between each other before shrugging their shoulders.

"Alright, let's go to the starting line! This is gonna be so much fun!"

Mimi started skipping towards one side of the rink, with the four competitors following close behind her. The two in the ships hovered above them, watching over the rink as their teammates finally reached the beginning of it. Mimi stood between the two pairs at the start of the rink, holding her hands up in the air and counting down from ten on them.

"Remember, anything goes in this challenge! Play dirty, do whatever you need to do to beat the others! And with that...go!"

Suddenly, she swung her arms down like a starting flag, getting both of the pairs to start towards the flag, having a hard time moving on the icy rink as Mimi sat back and giggled to herself. Liz wobbled as she moved along the rink, barely able to keep her balance, while Gretchen had already fallen to the ice, and was paddling across it with her arms to try and pull herself ahead. Archie grabbed at every spike as they came up to them, using them to propel himself forward, while Sebastian was simply running in place, failing to make any progress due to the slipperiness of the ice.

"What gives, man!?" Sebastian shouted aggressively, "This challenge is wack!"

"Ohhhhh!" Mimi slapped her hand against her helmet, "I completely forgot to tell you all about the ice skating mode for your space suits."

"The what!?" Liz stopped moving, though the sudden stop caused her to fall to the ice, "What gives!? Why would you not tell us about that!?"

"Hey, Liz!" Gretchen shouted over to her, "Don't yell at her, it's a simple mistake."

"Fine, fine. Ugh."

"Right, sooooo," Mimi held her left arm up, showing a blue button on it. "This button on each of your suites will deploy skates from the boots of your suits, and you should have a lot easier of a time with the challenge then."

"All we need to do is press that button?" Archie looked down at his arm, slapping the button soon after.

As he did, the blades set themselves up on the bottom of his boots, causing him to tower over the others even more than he did before. Seeing this, the other three each pressed the buttons on their suits, getting their blades to set up just like his had. The girls both pulled themselves up to their feet, now being able to actually navigate across the rink, and the two pairs shared a competitive glance at each other.

"Well...see ya!" Sebastian shouted, blasting a laser at Gretchen, who deflected it with her laser saber, causing it to fire back at him and knock him to the ground.

"Sebastian, you idiot!" Archie rushed over to him, pulling him to his feet as the girls started skating towards the flag.

The boy shook his head when his temporary paralysis was up, immediately shoving the finalist away from him before starting after the girls. Archie gritted his teeth, soon chasing after Sebastian irritatedly. Gretchen was the furthest ahead in the group, and as such, she easily grabbed the flag before anyone else could get to her, grinning to herself as she did.

"Haha, yes!" she cheered, holding it up and looking over her shoulder to show Liz, "Look, I got-"

Immediately, she noticed that the girl was currently in the paralysis, and Sebastian was skating towards her at intense speeds, causing her to pick up her pace, trying to avoid him.

"I'm gonna get you for that!" the boy shouted after her as he got closer and closer.

"Not if I'm too fast for you to catch!"

Gretchen laughed to herself, but she was suddenly met with a wall in front of her, and she slammed into it face first. It wasn't an ice wall, but a brick wall, and it confused the group. Sebastian used the chance to snag the flag from her hand, skating around the wall as Archie caught up with him.

"Nice one, Natt!" Archie spoke into his suit's mic, holding a thumbs up to the sky for his other teammate to see.

"You got it," Natt called back through the mix system, "That should give you two enough time to make it to the end of the challenge."

As the boys pressed on, Liz skated over to Gretchen, pulling her up from the ground and dragging her around the wall.

"Come on, Gretch," Liz tried to encourage her, "We have to pick up our pace or they're gonna win this point!"

"Oh, not if I have anything to say about it!" the finalist turned her own suits microphone on, "Damien, hit the rink with something to slow them down."

"You got it," the actor looked over the many buttons and levers around him, tapping his chin in thought, "Hm...crater maker? That sounds pretty good to me."

He slammed his fist on the button, firing a ball towards the rink, just ahead of where Archie and Sebastian were, causing it to cause a massive crater in the ice, which they skated right into, finding themselves ten feet below where the actual rink was supposed to be.

"What the hell!?" Archie looked around for a way to get back up to rest of the rink, but he was coming up blank. "What are we supposed to do now? There really isn't an easy way out of this..."

"Hm...I need to think about it," Sebastian held the flag in his hand, holding his other hand against where his chin would be.

"Oh, boys!" Gretchen called down to the two of them, her and Liz having finally caught up with them, "You mind tossing that flag up to us? I don't think you can do much with it anymore."

"Why, you! Let us out of this crater!"

"Hmmmm," Liz thought about it for a second, "Nah, I think you should just give us the flag so we can get our point now."

"Not a chance," Archie spat back at her, "You'll have to come down here yourselves and get it from us."

Gretchen and Liz grumbled for a moment before coming to a sudden realization.

"Well, hypothetically speaking, one of us could go down there and nab the flag from you and just toss it back up to the other."

Archie and Sebastian's eyes both widened at the same time, having completely forgot about that possibility, though Sebastian soon lose this fear. He started to snicker, shaking his head before turning to face his partner.

"They can't do that," the boy snickered as he spoke, "There's no way in hell they'd be able to nab the flag from the two of us, it's way to easy for us to keep them off of us. Besides, I got a plan brewing in my head that might help us out."

The two girls watched from above, growing bored as Sebastian and Archie huddled up together, talking about a plan in secret. Eventually, they found themselves growing far too tired with waiting for them to make there move, and Gretchen nudged Liz.

"Go on down there, let's get this over with already," the finalist said confidently, causing Liz to smirk.

"Agreed, waiting sucks. I'm coming down to get that flag from you- what are you two doing?"

Gretchen looked over at the sight that Liz was looking at, noticing that the two boys had linked arms, and were skating in a circle around the wall of the crater, gaining more and more momentum with every single turn.

"And...go!" Sebastian shouted as he let go of Archie's arms.

With that, the finalist was sent flying, skating right out above the crater and causing both of the girls to look over at him, entirely astonished. Before they had a chance to skate on after him, Sebastian blasted the two of them with his blaster, knocking them both to the ground as Archie skillfully skated past the finish line, holding the flag in the air victoriously.

"Woohoo!" Archie cheered loudly before catching himself, "Ah, I mean...cool."

Mimi rushed over to the boy, clapping her hands rapidly and jumping up and down in excitement.

"The first point goes to Team Archie!" she chirped, "Now, let's get you all on your way to the next planet, yeah?"

Confessional

"Sebastian is turning out to be pretty helpful for this challenge," Archie mumbled to himself, not sure about how he should feel, "I still don't like the guy, but he's the only reason we got that first point."

"Bow chika wow, baby!" Sebastian smirked at the camera in a cocky manner, "That's how we get things done the Seabass way!"

Confessional End

After some time, Mimi had gathered all six of those competing around a teleporter, one that they hadn't seen quite yet. Gretchen and Liz looked down at the ground in shame while Damien patted the two of them on the back, trying to comfort them while Archie, Sebastian, and Natt cheered for their early point.

"Well, it's been super fun having you guys here," Mimi started in her giddy tone, "But you've gotta go on ahead to your next challenge now. I'm not sure where your destination is, but expect it to be crazy! See ya!"

The group waved as they passed her by, each of them going through the teleporter and leaving her behind. They ended up on a hot planet, one that had many mountains towering over the landscape. A quick scan of the area showed that there were two ships waiting for the groups, these ones being a sleak, blue model, almost seeming to have the appearance of a bird in shape. The groups looked around to see if there was any information to gather before getting on the ships, but there was no one from what they could see.

"Well, we're one up on you guys already," Archie pointed out, causing Liz to grit her teeth, "You think you can beat us in this one."

"Ha!" Gretchen laughed loudly, "If you think we're gonna let you get two points in a row, you've got another thing coming! Let's go guys-"

Sebastian suddenly fired a blast at Gretchen, though she was quick to deflect it, knocking him to the ground instead, causing both of his teammates to look down at him in shame.

"You really are trigger happy, you know that?" Damien rolled his eyes before starting towards one of the ships with the girls.

Archie and Natt both let out an annoyed sigh, pulling Sebastian up from the ground and dragging him along behind them as they started towards their own ship. The boy snapped out of his paralysis soon enough, shaking his head rapidly before leaping up to his feet and following along with the other two.

"I totally could've landed that shot, she cheated," Sebastian insisted.

"Yeah, right," Archie scoffed, "Can you just relax with the blasting anyone and anything? You're just gonna keep getting yourself knocked down at this point."

"Save the firing for when we get into the actual challenge, eh?" Natt suggested, causing Sebastian to roll his eyes at him.

As the boys entered their ship, Damien began his takeoff, leaving them down on the ground while he and the girls started heading towards the top of the mountains. Archie and Sebastian each buckled themselves up while Natt got in his pilot's seat, taking off from the ground as fast as he could to try to catch up with the other ship. While they started their travel, Damien was scouring the tops of the mountains, trying to see exactly where to land the ship, eventually spotting a large platform with a single astronaut on it.

"Aha!" the actor started pressing towards it as soon as he saw it, "Got our lz in sight."

"Lz?" Liz rolled her eyes, "I think you're taking this pilot thing a little too seriously, don't you?"

"Eh, let him have his fun," Gretchen leaned back in her chair, "After all, he has to stay in the ship while we get to do all the cool stuff on the outside."

The ship landed safely on the platform, and Damien let the door open up for the girls to step out. Once they did, he gave them a thumbs up before ascending once again into the sky. The two approached the astronaut, that being Jackson, who was crouched to the ground, carving a bear into the platform. The girls looked at him for a while before he looked up at them.

"Oh...hey," he greeted them, standing up from the ground and stretching his arms. "Guess you guys are a little bit ahead of the others, eh?"

"Yeah, but not enough to just chat idly," Liz remarked, annoyed, "Just tell us what the challenge is, we need this point!"

"Liz!" Gretchen slapped the back of her helmet, "Be nice!"

"Don't you want to get the score tied up?"

"Yeah, but you don't have to be rude!"

"Alright, alright," Jackson stopped the two from bickering, "I don't wanna deal with a bunch of obnoxious idiots all damn day, so let's just get this out of the way. You'll notice that there's a bunch of these platforms on the mountains, just like this one. Thing is, one of them is pretty special. It's got a throne on it, really shiny thing. Your challenge is to hold the fort down there until, here's the fun part, the barrier goes down."

"The barrier?"

"Yeah, there's a barrier around the throne, nothing can get past it, not even the lasers. The barrier will go down after a whole minute of one team being on the platform, but if the other team jumps on it, the countdown will pause. Really makes things difficult to just rush through. You win the challenge when your finalist sits their butt down on the throne, got it?"

"Got it!" Gretchen nodded, "So, which platform is the throne on?"

"I dunno, go find it on your own. They aren't paying me for this, you know."

"Why you," Liz cracked her knuckles, ready to beat the answer out of him until Gretchen scooped her off of the ground.

"Forget it, let's just go look for it."

"You should be able to jump from platform to platform pretty easily, gravity here is just a little weaker than that on Earth," Jackson noted as the two girls started away from him.

Soon enough, he was back to carving into the platform, at least until the second ship landed on the platform, Archie and Sebastian both bursting from it in a hurry, rushing over to him and skidding to a halt.

"Yo, guy," Sebastian tapped Jackson on the shoulder incessantly, "What's our challenge, lay it on us."

"Ugh, I already told the girls, do I really have to talk about it again?"

"Uh, yeah?" Archie crossed his arms, "It needs to be fair for both of us, right?"

"You're all so annoying...I can't remember anybody from my season being this annoying. Fine, you want to know what the challenge is? You two, platform, throne, guard, sit. There, figure it out on your own and stop bugging me."

"What the hell!?" Sebastian stomped his foot on the platform, "That's bogus, man! Tell us what we're supposed to do or we'll-"

Archie cut his teammate off by pulling him away from the boy, shaking his head in disappointment.

"Let's just try to tail the girls," the finalist suggested, "We'll probably have better luck doing that than trying to get an answer out of this asshat."

"Whatever," Sebastian rolled his eyes before turning back to Jackson once again, "You're an ass, you know that?"

"That's ironic, isn't it?" Jackson didn't even look up from his carving as the boys scanned the area for the girls.

Meanwhile, Gretchen and Liz had already hopped a few platforms over, getting closer and closer to the one with the throne on it. After jumping to another one and landing safely, Gretchen noticed that there was a platform above them, one that had a shiny chair in the center of it, with a blueish tube around it.

"I'm willing to bet that's our target," Gretchen nudged Liz on the shoulder, pointing up at the platform, "Question is, how do we even get up there?"

"Hm," Liz thought to herself as she looked around the area, checking to see if there were any platforms that they could've maybe used to jump up to it. "I'm not sure, I mean, we could always try to blast through the floor and knock the throne down here."

"But isn't it in that barrier thing? Didn't Jackson say it would be impossible for anything to get through that, even lasers?"

"True...you could throw me up there, probably."

"But I need to sit on it, not you."

"Then there has to be another way around it! Like...maybe there's some sort of trampoline or something on one of these that'll-"

Liz cut herself off upon hearing two thuds above her and her teammate. They both glanced up, noticing Archie and Sebastian standing on the platform, each of them inspecting the throne with interest.

"This must be the throne that he mentioned," Archie muttered, "Pretty damn shiny, a little too shiny, actually."

"Yeah, but what are we s'posed to do now?" Sebastian asked, knocking his fist against the barrier, "Looks like this thing's locked up tight."

"Hey!" Liz shouted over to the two, grabbing their attention as they walked to the edge of the platform, looking down at her, "How'd you bozos get up there?"

"What makes you think we'll tell you? From where we're standing, it seems like we've got a free ticket to another point...however we're supposed to get that point, anyway."

"Hang on a second," Gretch spoke up, "What was that last thing you said?"

"Er...! I mean...haha! We're gonna win another point, eat that!"

"Sebastian you idiot," Archie slapped his pal against his own helmet, "Whatever, it doesn't matter whether or not we don't know how to get the point. They don't know how to get up here, anyways."

The two boys walked back over to the chair, standing around it and waiting for something to happen. As they did, Liz crumbled to the ground, frustrated, slamming her fists against it.

"This is so stupid!" Liz groaned, "We beat them to the guardian and they're still ahead of us! How are we supposed to beat them now? Odds are, they'll figure it out sooner or later!"

"Stop whining," Gretchen picked Liz up off the ground, "There's gotta be someway for us to get up there..."

"Yeah, right. We'd need a plane to takeoff with us in it to...that's it! Call Damien down here!"

"Oh! Right!"

Gretchen pressed a button on her suit, turning on the microphone and the speakers in Damien's ship.

"Hey, Damien!" she shouted, causing him to suddenly leap up from his seat.

"Ah, yes!" the boy replied, still a little shaken up.

"Can you come on down to us asap? We need a lift!"

"Oh, roger!"

Damien turned the ship around suddenly, heading towards the two little blips on his tracking system, until running into Natt, who had several cannons and blasters aimed right at him.

"Er...I may have run into a slight issue up here."

Looking further up at the sky, Gretchen noticed the two ships in their current stand off, Natt's appearing far more menacing than Damien's by a mile.

"Hey, Liz...what do we do about that?"

"Oh my...uh...I don't think there's anything we can do to stop that," the scientist replied, firing a single blast from her gun at the ship, though it merely stuck it and did nothing. "Well, I've tried all I got."

"Liz!"

"What? You know that we can't reach those two, and even if we could, what good would it do? They're in those massive ships, all we have is a laser gun and a light stick."

"Well, maybe we could-"

Out of nowhere, the barrier around the throne suddenly disappeared, causing a loud popping noise as it did and startling all four of the people on the platforms. Gretchen and Liz looked up in horror as Sebastian and Archie came closer to the throne, each inspecting it a lot closer than they could last time. Sebastian took a seat in it, finding it to be very uncomfortable on his butt before jumping up in anger.

"This chair is a load of phooey!" Sebastian complained, "How're you gonna have something as elegant as this thing sitting up here, but have it feel like a dollar store folding chair!?"

"I don't think it's supposed to be very comfortable," Archie mumbled.

"Why don't you sit on it, then? You'll see for yourself."

"Fine."

Archie moseyed over to the throne, sitting down in it and causing it to light up brightly, hurting both of the boys eyes before they averted their gaze. Gretchen and Liz looked down in shame once again while the two ships started coming down from the sky, each landing on the platform that their respective teammates were on. Jackson scooted on over to the group, leaping onto the platform with Gretchen and Liz on it while holding a box in his hands. Both pilots came out of their ships, and the boys on the higher platform jumped down to the lower one, Sebastian grinning at the other team in his cocky manner. Liz returned his grin by sticking her tongue out at him.

"And Team Archie is at two points now," Jackson said unexcitedly, "Yippee."

He tossed the box to the ground, causing it to burst open and reveal one of the teleporter portals that everyone was so used to seeing at this point.

"Now, run along to your next destination, I don't wanna see your mugs around here anymore."

"You are such an asshole," Gretchen mumbled.

"Thanks, I try."

The six contestants glared at the boy before heading through the teleporter, one by one, leaving him, the ships, and Venus behind. Meanwhile, Vicente was still struggling with keeping the former interns under control as they ran rampant through the main lobby now, bothering all of the former contestants that were trying to watch the show.

"Do you need some help, mate?" Alex asked as Zachary tripped Vicente, knocking him to the floor.

"Gah!" Vicente groaned before leaping up and chasing after the boy even faster than before, "I'm supposed to do this on my own or Maggie's not going to pay me! This is just ridiculous, you're both acting like your twelve!"

"Well, you're boring," Amelia poked fun at him as she ran upstairs, "Just let us have our fun, we're not hurting anybody."

"Last time you two just had your fun, you pointed a gun at somebody."

"It was loaded with blanks!"

"I don't know why," Dusty mumbled, annoyed, "I brought real bullets with it, but I can't seem to find 'em. That damn Chris..."

"Why did you bring a real gun with bullets to the space station, anyways?" Nicolás asked, scooting slightly away from Dusty in fear.

"In case somethin' bad happened while we were here! Imagine if that Thomas came after all of us, at least we would've had some protection."

"I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have had an issue with him if we just let him kill Chris," Haley muttered, gaining a shocked look from everybody else, "What?"

"Haley, why would you say that!?" Anne was taken aback.

"Holy moley, that's funny," Crustacean chuckled, the other's on her side of the risers now glaring at her.

As many contestants started questioning the morals of some of their other teammates, Benjamin found himself looking up at the screen with a glimmer in his eye. Jianne looked over at him in confusion, nudging him with her elbow.

"What are you looking at?" the girl asked, "You haven't been watching closely up until now."

"...Spunk," Benjamin mumbled.

"What?"

"Spunk! That's my puppy up there, see him?"

Hearing the boy excitedly shouting, everyone else looked up at the screen, noticing that the contestants were on a different planet, inside a massive cage. They each stood around a purple, alien dog with three eyes, one that made Tony's eyes widen. Sebastian looked at the dog with an uninterested gaze before nudging his two teammates.

"Looks like someone left their guard dog here," he jested, "I mean, come on. We need to get this thing going."

"This dog looks...familiar," Damien mumbled as he looked the creature up and down.

"That's because you've seen me before," Spunk replied, startling the six standing around him.

"Ah, you talked!" Gretchen exclaimed in a confused fear, "How can you talk!?"

"Oh, man," Archie held his head in shock, "This is gonna be just like those green aliens from before, isn't it."

"First of all: you're all quite rude," Spunk barked at them, causing them to stop talking and just watch him, "I'm far more sophisticated than the rabble of Europa, I'll have you know. Secondly, you're all friends with an associate of mine, dear Benjamin. He's a good kid, and I would never bring harm to any of his friends."

"What is it with aliens being obsessed with Benjamin," Gretchen whispered to Liz, who shrugged in response.

"Ahem, you're all here for the challenge, I presume?"

"Uh...yeah," Archie answered sheepishly.

"Well, then I can help you. This challenge is going to be heavily pilot oriented, so for you two that have probably been doing nothing fun up until now, it's your time to shine."

"Sweet," Natt spoke under his breath, "Just flying around isn't any fun."

"I don't see any ships mister...uh," Damien struggled to remember the name of the dog.

"Arghalon'kyloptolionmeronmus," Spunk answered, making everyone stare at him blankly, "But I believe Benjamin calls me 'Spunk.'"

"Spunk...Spunk...ah!" Damien suddenly leapt back, "You're the reason I was eliminated! I didn't even do anything, but you being on the station got pinned on me!"

"To save Benjamin, yes."

"But I never did anything! What gives, man!?"

"Damien, calm down," Gretchen said, putting her hands on his shoulders and trying to make him relax, though he shoved her away.

"No, I'm not gonna calm down! If it weren't for you, I would've still been in the competition, and March wouldn't have-..."

Archie was startled by how aggressive Damien had become over being reminded of his elimination. The actor glanced over at his friend, noticing how closely he was watching him. He backed off from the dog slightly, reserving himself as he joined his team again.

"I'm sorry...I shouldn't have exploded like that."

"Right," Spunk continued, glaring at the boy, "Anyway, there aren't any ships, per se. You'll find what you'll be piloting a lot more exciting than one of those ships, I'm sure of it."

"What do you mean?" Liz scoffed, "A damn spaceship is pretty exciting, I'd say."

"Just you watch."

Spunk tapped his front right foot against the ground, causing the ground itself to quake as two large holes opened up in it. The contestants all fell over from the sudden shaking, though they looked over at the holes to see two massive monster trucks rising from the ground. One was painted black, like Archie's space suit, while the other was the lightning yellow of Gretchen's suit. Both of the pilots' eyes widened at the sight, and Natt even let out a gasp in excitement, though it sounded like an uninterested sigh.

"This challenge will be taking place entirely on monster trucks, something I've heard you humans are quite fond of on Earth. Your goal is really simple, and it involves a lot of destruction, another thing you humans love. Your pilot will be controlling the truck, obviously, but the other two will be riding in the back, using whatever you can find to try and render the other truck immobile. This is a last truck standing contest, to keep things short and sweet. Any questions?"

"No, sir!" Natt exclaimed, startling both Sebastian and Archie as everyone rose to their feet, "Come on, guys! I wanna get on that truck!"

"Alright, just relax man-" Sebastian started, though he was cut off by Natt dragging him and their finalist towards the monster truck.

Gretchen chuckled as she watched the boys get dragged along by Natt, and she started towards her own truck.

"Come on, guys!" she called back to her two teammates before running off.

"We'll be right there!" Liz called back before grabbing Damien by the arm, "Hey, you."

"What?" the boy replied, not even sharing a glance to her.

"You need to quit it with the moping and the outbursts, Gretchen's got a lot on the line here, and it would suck if she lost out on all of it because of you."

"...That's funny, the person who's been a drag in both of the challenges before this one is calling me out."

"Excuse me!?"

"Ah! I'm sorry, I didn't mean that! I'm so sorry, Liz, I don't know what came over me!"

"Ugh, whatever. Let's just get to that truck and get this over with already."

Liz pressed on towards the truck, with Damien slowly trailing behind her, glaring at Spunk all the way over to it.

Confessional

"That dog," Damien mumbled as he clasped his hands together, "Tony, Thomas, that dog, and Benjamin...they're the reason all this happened. Gah, what am I saying!? I'm sorry...well, not to Thomas, but the others..."

"Calling me a drag, psh," Liz scoffed, "He doesn't even belong on this team, he doesn't fit in with us."

Confessional End

As the teams set themselves up in their monster trucks, Natt found himself overwhelmed with the excitement of actually being able to drive one of them. Archie and Sebastian sat in the back of the truck, looking at the items and weaponry that were available for use, each with a devilish grin on their faces. Meanwhile, Damien sat in his driver's seat, letting out a sigh as he glanced over the controls. Liz glared at him from the back of the truck, though Gretchen tried to get her to focus on the challenge. Spunk shot out a vine-like tendril from his back, using it to grab onto the top of the cage and pull himself into the air to watch the challenge better.

"Boys, start your engines!" the dog barked at them, causing the two massive engines to start revving up as the boys turned the keys. "Let's get ready to rumble! Your challenge starts...now!"

With his announcement, the two pilots started driving wildly around the arena, with their teammates in the back of the trucks ready to destroy their opponents no matter what it took. Liz was the first to hurl something at the enemy truck, that being a dart, which she flung into the front left tire perfectly, causing air to start leaking from it. The sudden change in tire pressure cause the vehicle to rumble, knocking down the two boys in the back as Natt tried to steady it.

"You two good back there?" the pilot asked, glancing over his shoulder for a split second before refocusing on the road.

"Ugh, we're fine," Sebastian groaned, pulling himself back to his feet and picking up a harpoon, "Let's see how they like this!"

The boy hurled the harpoon at one of the tires, though Damien managed to slickly avoid the weapon, swerving out of the way with just enough time. A vein in Sebastian's forehead flared up from anger immediately and he stepped aside, with Archie coming forward with a boomerang in hand. He threw the weapon towards where Damien was, aiming to take out the pilot himself, though Gretchen threw her saber at it, causing it to fall to the ground before the saber came back to her.

"Chris was right!" Gretchen exclaimed, holding her saber in astonishment, "They really do come back to you if you throw them!"

"Are you boys going to start trying at some point?" Liz mockingly asked before throwing another dart at the truck, puncturing the back left tire and causing their truck to lean to the left in response.

Archie and Sebastian flew forward, both catching themselves on the ledge of the truck to save them from falling, but they were disoriented from the sudden shift in movement. Natt struggled to gain control of the truck as it continued to lean to the one side.

"I don't know if I can keep this thing going for much longer," Natt called back to them, "You guys have to hit 'em with something."

"We're trying!" Sebastian complained, "Any bright ideas, Mr. Finalist?"

"I got two actually," Archie said, holding up two strange looking blasters and tossing one to his partner. "Not sure what these do, but let's test them out."

"Oho, I know exactly what these are...I got Liz and you got Gretchen, alright?"

"Huh? We're gonna blast them? Isn't that dangerous?"

"I'm sure you're gonna be surprised when you see what they do, just trust me."

"Alright..."

As the two talked, Damien swerved around to the other side of their truck, allowing both Liz and Gretchen to throw more darts at their tires, this time popping both of the right tires, but leveling the monster truck in the process. Sebastian and Archie both took aim at the girls as it leveled out, catching Liz's attention.

"Uh...Gretch?" Liz called to her friend, tugging on her jacket sleeve, "They aiming at us?"

"It sure does look like that, doesn't it?" Gretchen answered, her eyes widening.

"And...fire!" Sebastian shouted, causing both him and Archie to blast the girls with an eruption of water, which knocked them both off of the back of the truck.

"Hey, guy-" Damien cut himself off as he turned back, noticing that both of the girls were now gone, and he was alone with the two boys now aiming the water guns at him, "Ah crap, I gotta do something quick...hm...I got it!"

"Alright, let's get him out of it, too," Archie said as he put his finger on the trigger, "Sorry, Damien, we need to win this challenge!"

"Yeah...I'm sorry, too!"

Suddenly, Damien hit the brakes on his truck, causing it to abruptly stop as the boys fired their water blasts at it, which hit the front of it instead, causing the water to splash back rapidly and knock Natt out of his seat. Sebastian and Archie both screamed for dear life, hugging each other tightly as the truck crashed into the cage wall, causing both of them to fall over suddenly. Gretchen and Liz rose from the ground, noticing that the other truck had crashed, while Damien leapt out of his own, letting out a sigh of relief. Spunk descended from the top of the cage, walking on over to Gretchen's team and spitting out a box, which opened up into a teleporter, like Jackson's had before.

"Nice work, Gretchen, Liz, and Damien," the dog congratulated them, "The score's now two to one, but with six more planets, you've got plenty of chances to bring your score up more."

"Damien, that was awesome!" Gretchen cheered for her teammate, patting him on the back roughly and causing him to stumble forward.

"Uh...thanks, just trying to help," Damien blushed awkwardly.

"Well, it seems that you can be useful," Liz snidely commented, "I suppose that you can be a satisfactory teammate after all."

"...Thanks?"

As the one team cheered for their first point, the other stumbled on over to join them, Natt holding his head in a daze.

"That was wild," Natt mumbled before shaking his head off, "I can't believe I actually got to drive a monster truck."

"Yeah, but you totally cost us the point!" Sebastian growled, though Archie shoved him aside to step towards Damien.

"That was pretty clever," the poet commended his friend, "But don't get overconfident because of one point, we're still gonna win this thing."

"You're on!" Gretchen stepped into the conversation, a grin on her face.

"Ahem," Spunk interrupted the congratulating, "I hate to be a bother, but you've got to get to your next planet, do you not?"

"Ah, right! Oh, wait! Before we go, I thought you were supposed to be in space prison for something, how'd you end up here?"

"Community service of sorts...they're letting me off easy. Now, do say hi to Benjamin for me. I miss him dearly."

"You got it," Damien nodded before stepping through the portal, the other five following in suit.

As they all came out onto the other side of the portal, the group noticed that they were in a snowy landscape, confusing some of them. Sebastian's eyebrow twitched as he figured that they were now on Europa, where Haley had been eliminated from the competition.

"Here again...ugh," the boy complained, "Where Jianne cost Haley the game."

"Leave her out of this," Archie hissed, "Her getting eliminated was your fault, you're the one who ran off without your team."

"You really wanna start some shit, huh?"

Sebastian puffed up his chest as he approached Archie, thought a punch to the gut was all it took to knock him to the ground. Natt and Damien chuckled as the boy rolled around in pain on the ground. Gretchen tapped her finger against her helmet, where her chin would be, wondering why they were on Europa to begin with.

"What's the matter?" Liz asked her friend.

"It's just odd that we're on one of Jupiter's moons when they said we were only going to be on planets," Gretchen replied in confusion, "Doesn't really make sense, does it?"

"Well, we're not on Europa," Natt butted in.

"Huh? Where are we, then?"

"We're on-"

"Earth," Milly interrupted the boy, stepping forward in her coat, "To be specific, we are in Sweden."

The group was slightly astounded by how silently she had approached them, and Sebastian hopped back up to his feet, looking her up and down suspiciously.

"So...we can take our helmets off?" Damien asked, "It's getting stuffy in here."

"I suppose you will do better without them for this challenge, yes."

"Thank god!" Sebastian grumbled, tearing his helmet off to reveal his forehead drenched in sweat, "It's like a million degrees in there!"

"I do not think it was a million degrees. Perhaps it was one hundred degrees in Fahrenheit, or thirty-seven point seven, repeating of course, in Celsius."

"Uh...you don't have to take it so literal, you know," Archie pointed out.

"Nevermind that, you all wish to know about your next challenge, correct?"

"Yes, if you would be so kind," Liz mocked Milly's voice, causing the girl to glare at her.

"This snowy landscape is quite forested, as you can all see. Your goal is to use the forest to your advantage, each of you hiding in the forest and attempting to knock the other team out entirely. I will be providing you with special paralysis darts for this task."

Milly tossed a small case to each of the six contestants, dusting her hands off soon after passing them off.

"Those are your darts, you will each have six of them, so be sure to use them wisely. One of them will knock somebody down without hesitation, a paralysis that I alone hold the antivenom to. I will gladly administer it to all of you once the challenge is over, do not fret. For now, you'll have to scatter, and prepare yourselves for a battle. I have cameras all over this forest, so I will know when your team is out for the count. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Sebastian saluted her, causing the others to look over at him with disappointed expressions on their faces.

"I have never served in the military, why are you saluting me?"

"Well, you sound like a nasty drill sergeant, so I figured, why not?"

"...You are ridiculous. I will never understand these new contestants."

Milly grumbled to herself as she stepped off to the side, pulling a tablet from underneath her jacket and turning it on. She gestured to the group to scatter while she watched the screen, and they did so without hesitation.

Confessional

"I remember March talking about her a lot after the challenge that ended with Thomas...you know," Archie mumbled, "I didn't imagine she would actually be as rude as she made her out to be, but I was wrong."

"She was definitely hitting on me," Sebastian boasted, "I've got a girlfriend that I love and adore already, lady, so you can just buzz off."

"I sure hope Sebastian didn't think she was hitting on him," Natt groaned, rubbing his forehead in annoyance, "He tends to think all the girls are hitting on him. Dude wouldn't know if someone actually had feelings for him even if they said it just like that."

"We can do this!" Gretchen cheered, still sounding sure of herself, "Me and my team can make a comeback and win this whole finale!"

"I have to admit, Sebastian is quite the wild card," Liz mentioned, "He was never eliminated for being bad at challenges, but rather his attitude. Perhaps he will be the most difficult to deal with in this little game."

"I really do hate being on a team against Archie," Damien started, "But Gretchen is super cool, too! I'll help her comeback from Archie's lead, no matter what!"

Confessional End

Natt and Archie stood at the base of a tree, hiding behind a bank of snow while holding their darts in hand, ready to fire when given the command. Above them, in the trees branches, their was Sebastian, who was looking off into the distance, trying to spot the enemy team, though not having much luck yet. Natt had a faint smile on his face as he toyed with the darts in his hands, intriguing Archie.

"What're you thinking about?" the poet asked his friend.

"Oh, nothing," Natt replied, the smile quickly fading, "Sweden is just my home, so my family popped into my head for a minute. I've been missing them a little since I left to join the show."

"You're family is from Sweden?"

"Yeah, it's a nice place. My little sister is actually kinda famous, she's one of those idols. Sunshine is her stage name. I used to be a bodyguard for her, with this guy, Franchesco. Dude's built like a truck, could knock you flat in a second if you so much as looked at her wrong."

"Sounds scary."

"Nah, he's a cool guy. He lost his girlfriend and son in a car accident some years back, so we've been family to him since. Look at me, getting all mushy over here."

"Meh, it's alright. I'd be like that if I was home, too...my family saved me from a lot of shit, so I get it."

"What's your family gonna think when you get back?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, be honest here. When you first got to the station, you we're a lot shyer...not to mention defensive. I'd say you really opened up after coming here. You think they're gonna be surprised to see you being more confident?"

"...I think that's just what my mom wanted when she told me to sign up for this thing. She honestly might cry."

"That's sweet. My sister's gonna love meeting Anne, whenever that happens. And I'm sure Anne will have a lot to say about our wacky family. A space fanatic, an idol, a bodyguard, a martial artist, and a DJ walk into a bar. Something like that."

"Heh, sounds just like an Anne joke. You know...it's been a little while, and Sebastian hasn't said a word. Should we be worried?"

"Maybe he's learned to keep his mouth shut when he doesn't have anything nice to say."

"I'm gonna put some doubt on that. Hey, Sebastian!"

Archie looked up at his teammate, who was still seated on the branch, not moving a muscle with his gaze fixed on the distance. Natt looked up as well, noticing that something was off about him. His darts, and the case, were no longer in his hands, and the boys looked around for them, noticing some holes in the snow where they had fallen.

"Yo, dude," Natt called up, "You dropped your darts!"

"Hang on a second," Archie whispered to Natt, "Something really isn't right...he's as pale as a ghost."

"Huh...you're right. Hey, Sebasti-"

As Natt started to shout louder, the boy suddenly fell from the tree, each of his teammates scrambling to catch him so he wouldn't crash into the snow. Once they did, they noticed that he had a dart in his neck, and they frantically looked around, knowing that Gretchen and her cronies were surrounding them at this point. Archie turned to his left, immediately spotting Liz in the distance and reaching for one of his darts, though one of her own stuck into his neck before he could, and he fell face first into the snow. Natt quickly dove underneath the snow, leaving his two paralyzed teammates behind while Gretchen, Damien, and Liz approached them, looking around for Natt.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" Liz taunted the boy, holding two more darts in her hand, ready to throw them at any given moment.

"You can't hide forever!" Gretchen mocked him, "You're gonna have to face us at some point!"

They received no response as Natt snaked his way through the massive amount of snow, not popping up to show himself a single time as he did so. He had snatched Sebastian's darts from the snow where they had fallen, and now had twelve in his position. All he could feel was the numbing cold of the snow, but he ignored it to the best of his ability, sneaking further and further away from the enemy team. Eventually, he poked his head up through the snow, noticing that he had got quite some distance between him and the others. He hid behind another tree, glancing around it now and then to keep tabs on the girls. Then, something suddenly occurred to him. Damien wasn't with them anymore. Natt started panicking, looking around frantically to see if the boy was near him, but not seeing anything. He let out a deep exhale, thinking that he was in the clear, until the boy suddenly jumped out from behind another tree, aiming a dart at Natt.

"I got you now, Natt!" the actor shouted with devious intent, launching the dart at him, though it was ducked underneath.

Natt rose from the snow quickly, tackling Damien to the ground with one of his own darts in his hand. He aimed to stick him with it, though the actor fought back as best as he could, struggling to keep his hand away from his neck. Ultimately, Natt stuck him with the dart, causing him to freeze up in place. The boy rose from the snow, letting out another deep breath.

"That...felt a lot more intense than it should've," Natt mumbled.

As he reached for Damien's stache of darts, he could hear two sets of footsteps approaching quickly, and he immediately ducked back into the snow, hiding himself from anyone's line of sight. He steadied his breathing, keeping quiet as Liz and Gretchen both walked over to the fallen Damien, the scientist shaking her head in disappointment.

"And he goes from being useful to useless in a matter of seconds," Liz grumbled, "Go figure."

"Don't be like that, Liz," Gretchen said as she propped him up against the tree, "What if it was you who had gotten out already? You wouldn't want him saying that about you."

"Ah, but I would never let myself get stuck so eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-"

Liz slurred her speech as a dart stuck into her neck, before slumping over into the snow, just like the others who had undergone the effects of the paralysis from before. Gretchen gasped in fear, rushing over to Liz to prop her up against the very same tree that she had put Damien against. She started to back up from them, but upon doing so, she felt a prick on her neck, turning around to notice Natt standing there, before collapsing like her teammates. Natt sat down in the snow, exhausted from the intensity that he just dealt with. In a few moments, Milly had come over to him, clapping her hands slowly before pulling out a couple syringes from her jacket and crouching near the three fallen contestants.

"That was most impressive, Natt," the guardian noted, "You really came through for your team in this challenge. And, in doing so, you have brought your score up to three, two points above Gretchen and her team. Very well done."

"Thanks...how long will that stuff take to work on them?"

"Mere moments," Milly answered before injecting each of the three with the syringes, "They will be slightly dizzy for a while, but they should return to their senses shortly. Once everyone is up, I shall lead you to the next teleporter."

"Great...man, that was exhausting."

Confessional

"I never expected the final challenge to be so excruciating," Natt said, exasperated, "And I'm not even one of the finalists! I can only imagine that Sebastian is getting sick of having to help somebody, too. Oh well, we'll get through it. I'm sure Archie will give him something for his troubles, anyway."

Confessional End

After the group had come to, they found themselves standing before another teleporter, with Milly standing beside it, their helmets on the other side of it. Sebastian was the most dazed of the group, holding his head as he wobbled in place, each of the other contestants giggling at the sight.

"I suppose this is the last bit of time we will be sharing together during this challenge," Milly said coldly, "I can finally get back to enjoying the quiet. Though, I would appreciate if Mimi was with me. Nevermind that, get going to your next destination. And make sure you put your helmets on before you go through the teleporter, you do not want to die, do you?"

"No, ma'am," Sebastian weakly mumbled, grabbing his helmet from the ground and snapping it on tightly, the other five following in suit.

"That was pretty thrilling, eh, guys?" Natt nudged his teammates with his elbows, both of them groaning in response.

"I'd say it was painful," Archie griped, "I'm glad we're done with this one."

"Hey, at least no one went commando on you," Damien glared at Natt.

"Sorry, it was the heat of the moment," Natt chuckled awkwardly.

"Telling me what my heart meant!" Gretchen sung, shaking off her dizziness, "Great tune!"

"Please leave," Milly impatiently whined.

The contestants rolled their eyes at her, passing her by as they went through the teleporter onto their next destination. They ended up on a barren planet, one that was scorchingly hot. Their cooling systems started to kick in quickly, relieving of the heat and allowing them to press on without melting in the suits.

"Hey, planet boy," Gretchen called over to Natt, "Where do you figure we are now?"

"Hm...judging by the look...I'd say we're on Mercury," Natt answered, happy to be of use, "That would also explain the heat."

"And it looks like we're back to finding our way over to the battleground," Archie mentioned, pointing out the two ships ahead of them, "It was nice just landing right in them while we could."

"I'm assuming they nixed that for Pluto due to how small it is," Liz started, "And Earth because of flight traffic and such. Whatever, let's just get on over to the next challenge. We need to make a comeback, guys."

"I know, I know," Damien grumbled, "You don't have to be so rude, you know that?"

"Oh, shut up and get over to that damn ship already."

"Liz, what did I tell you about being nasty to Damien?" Gretchen scooped her friend off the ground, cradling her like a child, "Do I have to treat you like a baby?"

"Put me down!"

Damien snickered as Gretchen carried her flailing teammate over to the ship, and Sebastian couldn't help but laugh obnoxiously at the sight of it.

"Looks like somebody's team isn't cooperating as well as ours, huh guys?" he nudged both of his teammates, who shared an annoyed glance at each other.

"Let's just go to the ship," Archie hissed at Sebastian, "The sooner we finish the challenge, the sooner we don't have to deal with Mr. Obnoxious."

"Who's Mr. Obnoxious?"

Natt and Archie pressed on towards the ship, with Sebastian trailing behind them.

"Hey, who's Mr. Obnoxious!?"

Confessional

"We only need two more points to win the finale," Archie boasted, a wide grin on his face, "I just need to pray that Sebastian doesn't end up screwing us over. I know Natt's gonna be doing his best, but...you know."

"I'm starting to think that they were calling me Mr. Obnoxious!" Sebastian complained, "The nerve of those two!"

Confessional End

After a brief flight to their next destination, the ships landed near Belladonna, who was pouting due to the lack of plant life on the planet. She still stood near the laser tag arena from before, having been waiting for their arrival for quite some time. As the groups poured out of their ships, her eyes lit up, and she rushed over to Archie, hugging him tightly, shocking the other five.

"Archie, you really are here!" she squealed, "I've been missing you since I left the space station, but I'm glad you made it all the way to the finale! Do you feel like a winner? I remember when I was in my finale a couple seasons back...ah, those were good times. Oh, I'm sorry!"

Suddenly, she set the boy back down on the ground, letting him go and allowing him to breathe.

"Gretchen and Archie, Archie and Gretchen! I never would've expected this finale, I thought that Tony was gonna swindle his way here! Those bad-guy types always get their way until the end, it seems."

"Hey, he wasn't all bad," Gretchen spoke up, "He did the right thing in the end."

"Yes, he did," Liz nodded, "He thought I would be upset with him for losing the money, but he saved you...and that's really all that matters."

"Aw, the evil scientist has a heart," Sebastian mocked the girl, "How sweet!"

"If only you had one," Natt said under his breath, causing Archie and Damien to snicker.

"Now, now!" Belladonna continued, "Let's not get too argumentative here, we need to get you ready for this next challenge! Pluto was quite pilot-oriented, yes? Well, this challenge is very marksman-oriented! It's a fun ol' game of laser tag! I'm sure you've each at least heard of laser tag."

"Yeah, I'm amazing at it!" Liz boasted.

"With your stature?" Damien asked, "That's honestly surprising, good on you."

"Is that a short joke!?"

"Huh!? No, I'm just trying to be friendly!"

"No fighting!" Belladonna shouted, causing the two to both hush up, "Now, the pilots will be sitting this challenge out. Yes, I know, how boring. The marksmen and the sabers masters will be jumping into this laser tag arena to face off against each other. It's really quite simple...except it's not! The marksmen will both be blindfolded, and the saber masters can only tell them what directions to move and where to fire their weapons! Not only that, but the marksmen will also have to give the saber masters a piggyback ride as they run through the maze that is this arena!"

"Are you serious!?" Liz screamed in anger, "I can't carry Gretchen, she's almost twice my size!"

"Ha!" Sebastian laughed at her, "I'll have an easy time carrying Archie, he's practically a twig!"

"This is gonna be great," Archie said with a sigh.

"Now, come here and allow me to blindfold you two!"

Sebastian and Liz both stepped forward, the boy smirking cockily at the short girl as Belladonna wrapped a band around her helmet, covering the glass entirely and not allowing her to see a thing. She did the same for Sebastian, and when she finished, she pulled the two saber masters over by their arms.

"Now, marksmen, prepare to be boarded, har har!"

The two of them groaned in annoyance while getting into a proper position for their finalists to hop onto their shoulders. Archie climbed up onto Sebastian, being held with ease, just as the boy had said he would be, though Liz struggled to stand with Gretchen on her shoulders, her legs wobbling as she tried to hold her.

"Now, I shall step aside, allowing you both to step forward into our little maze here, teehee!"

Belladonna giggled suspiciously while Sebastian walked forward past the starting line of the maze, Liz slowly moving towards it on her own, Gretchen looking down at her worried.

"Hey, don't worry if this is too hard for you," the finalist said to her teammate, "We'll still have some opportunities to even the score even if we lose this one."

"No!" Liz protested, "We can't let them get four points...they'd only need one more to win!"

"Alright, just don't strain yourself. Okay?"

"Fine..."

As the two pairs stood just past the starting line, Belladonna snickered to herself, pressing a button on a remote and causing a wall to appear between the pairs, and another on at the starting line, cutting them off from the rest of the planet. Damien and Natt gasped at the sight, noticing that Belladonna was pulling out a tablet, akin to the one that Milly was using back on Earth. On the screen, a feed of both pairs was displayed, and the pilots watched intently.

"Alright, you guys!" Belladonna shouted loud enough for everyone to hear, "All you need to do is knock the enemy finalist off of their teammate's shoulders. Let's go!"

Archie looked at the two paths available to him and Sebastian, one directly in front of the pair, and one to the right of them, with the new walls behind him and to the left.

"Um...go right," Archie ordered Sebastian.

"You got it, boss," Sebastian replied, turning right and gunning it forward.

"Wait, not that fast-"

Archie was cut off by Sebastian ramming into a wall, almost dropping him in the process, but catching himself just in time before shaking himself off.

"Oy, that was a close one! Watch where you're directing me, guy!"

"It would've been fine if you didn't run like a bull seeing red! Whatever, turn left and go straight ahead."

"Alright, captain."

Sebastian once again gunned ahead, causing Archie to sigh disappointedly before slapping the top of his helmet, causing him to suddenly turn left again, heading down another path.

"Ah, what the hell!?" Sebastian shouted, "How did you do that!?"

"Do what?"

"You just made me turn out of nowhere, I didn't even try to turn!"

"Huh...how interesting. Hey, start running again."

"Alright..."

Sebastian began to run forward again, heading down a long path with a wall at the end of it. As they got nearer and nearer to it, Archie focused himself, eventually slapping his teammate's helmet again, causing him to make a sharp right turn at the end of the corridor, heading into another path.

"Oho, this is working out too well. Sebastian, don't stop running!"

Sebastian gulped in fear as he kept running, Archie slapping his helmet here and there to get him turning down different paths. Meanwhile, Liz was still back at the beginning of her path, struggling to carry Gretchen through it, just like how she struggled to even get into the maze in the first place.

"You're not hurting yourself, are you?" Gretchen asked, worried for Liz's wellbeing.

"No, I'm fine," Liz grunted as she pressed on, "Just tell me when to turn!"

"...We haven't even gotten to the first turn yet."

"What!? It feels like I've been walking for a mile, how far away is it!?"

"...Like ten feet from the entrance."

"WHAT!? Ugh, this is clearly targeted to make me seem useless, I call unfair challenge!"

"Liz, it's really not that big of a deal if we lose thi-"

"No! We can't lose this one...we can't..."

Liz sounded more depressed than ever as she uttered those words, causing Gretchen to look down at her in a more worried gaze.

"...Liz?"

"I can't be the reason you lose...Damien was right about me. When he said that on Pluto..."

"Said what?"

"That I've been a drag on every challenge...I have been. I'm too small to jump high, too weak to carry you, legs aren't long enough to skate, and my cockiness got the best of me in that dart fight. We're gonna lose another challenge because of me, and then they'll only need one more point to win."

"Liz, it's not-"

"It is a big deal! This is a contest for five million dollars, and you're gonna lose out on it because of me! I can't bear to be the reason you lose! Chris should've let you pick someone else to be on your team, your not gonna win with me here."

"Shut up!"

"Gretchen!?"

"I hate it when you say stuff like that! You were like this when you kissed Tony, too! You're always beating yourself down for your minor shortcoming, and you ignore all the awesome and good things you do! Sure, you're a bit of an evil mastermind, but you're a genius! A lot of the challenges we won, we won because of the cool things you were able to do, the things that we couldn't do without you!"

"Gretchen..."

"So...just stop! Stop berating yourself everytime you can't do something, we all have flaws, you hear me!"

"I-"

"Oh, I hear you loud and clear!" Archie announced his presence as Sebastian came around the corner, carrying him on his shoulders and startling Gretchen, "Sebastian, blast forward!"

"Roger," Sebastian smirked beneath his blindfold as he raised his blaster, shooting a singular laser from it and hitting Gretchen.

The rocker's weight suddenly dropped onto Liz, making it even more difficult than before to carry her. As the scientist felt her knees buckling, she knew that everything was lost, once again. Once again because of something she did...or was it? The bad thoughts washed away quickly, and a look of pure determination appeared on Liz's face. She took in a deep breath, somehow able to support Gretchen long enough to raise her own blaster and fire forward, hitting Sebastian in the chest and causing him to fall forward, Archie falling off of his shoulders in the process. Once the boys hit the floor, the walls around them sunk into the ground, and Natt and Damien rushed over to the group. The actor lifted Gretchen off of Liz's shoulders, though she woke from her unconsciousness soon after, shaking herself off before tearing the blindfold off of Liz's helmet.

"What happened!?" the finalist asked her friend frantically.

"Actually...we won that one," Liz mumble, glancing over as Natt helped Archie off of the ground, and Sebastian hopped to his feet, cursing to himself all the while.

"We...we did?"

"Yep! I blasted Sebastian, knocked Archie right off of his shoulders!"

"But...I was out cold...and the blindfold-"

"I told you I was good at laser tag, remember?"

Liz carried a confident smirk on her face, keeping her eyes closed as she stood triumphantly. Out of nowhere, Gretchen lunged at her, hugging her tightly and patting her on the back, startling the girl.

"You're so cool, Liz."

"...Thanks, Gretch."

Confessional

"I shouldn't be doubting myself," Liz started, that confidant look on her face, "I am a genius, after all, and I'm damn good at what I do. Gretchen's inspiring personality never ceases to amaze me, I'll give her that. IT really was a gift to happen upon someone like her up her."

Confessional End

The two groups of three stood before another teleporter, with Belladonna behind them, patting both of the finalists on the back.

"Looks like the score is three to two, Archie up by one!" the battleground's guardian announced, smiling widely, "You've only got four more challenges, though who knows if you'll actually make it to the rest of them! Somebody could win before you have the chance! Well, it was nice seeing all of you, but I'm afraid you'll need to be going on to your next challenge...let me just..."

She reached over to everyone's helmets, pressing a button on the back of them and causing fins to pop up on the backs and arms of their suits, startling each of them, as they didn't know that the suits could do that.

"These things are just full of surprises, aren't they," Natt mumbled to himself, that faint smile upon his usually emotionless face once again, "Neat."

"You'll need those fins for where you're going! Now...see ya!"

Without further ado, Belladonna started shoving the contestants through the teleporter, one by one, each of them passing through and immediately falling through the sky, noticing that the teleporter was hovering above a massive ocean. They all screamed as they fell, until they all crashed into the water. One by one, the six of them popped up from underneath the water, each looking around frantically for the ships or some sort of hint.

"Where the hell are we now!?" Sebastian asked, swimming over to Natt and grabbing him by the shoulders, "Tell us, space man!"

"Get your hands off of me," Natt snapped in response, shoving Sebastian back, "We're on Neptune. You'd know that if you paid attention to the show after you left."

"Why would I pay attention to a show that I'm not in? Sounds like a waste of time to me."

"Of course it does..."

"Yo, take a look at those," Gretchen spoke up above the boys.

She was gesturing to two tubes that stuck out of the water by a foot, each with the name of one of the finalists on it. Archie paddled towards the tube, peeking over the top of it and looking down to see where it led.

"It looks like some sort of slide or something," the poet noted, "I'm assuming they lead down to our vehicles for this planet."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Liz looked over at her two teammates, "Let's go!"

The two groups swam on over to the tubes, each of the finalists pulling themselves over the ledge and sliding down into first, both letting out an excited scream all the way down. Their teammates were quick to follow them, and once they had all gone through the long, swirling tubes, they found themselves in a submarine like ship, one that had the exterior of a massive fish. Damien walked over to the controls of Gretchen's ship, getting a good look at them to try and familiarize himself with them.

"Hm...these look a lot simpler than the other ships' controls," the actor noted, taking a seat in the chair before them, "I wonder why that is?"

"Ha, they probably figured that the pilots would be weak in the intellect area, so they dumbed it down for you," Liz commented snarkily.

"You are just the best teammate ever, you know that?"

"Hey, quit it, you two," Gretchen piped up, slapping the both of them on the back of the head, "We can be more agreeable than the other team, and you both know we can. Now, stop mocking each other, and focus on the challenge."

"Gretchen's right, sorry, Liz."

"Whatever," Liz rolled her eyes, "I can only imagine how bad things are with Sebastian right now. Archie's probably ready to explode in there."

"Ha, yeah! Being stuck in such a tight space with him, and underwater? There probably ready to throw him out of their ship already!"

The three laughed it off, but as they did, something much different was happening on Archie's ship.

"I'm telling you that Dragon Star S is the best anime, man!" Sebastian shouted, Archie crossing his arms in response. "They've got it all! Fight scenes, emotional scenes, characters named after vegetables, what more could you want!?"

"Some substance, maybe," Archie replied with a sigh, "My Hero High School has way more to it than 'I wanna fight you to see who's stronger!' They've got a plot that actually makes the viewer want to watch more."

"You guys are both idiots," Natt spoke up, shaking his head in disappointment, "Sailor America is clearly the best anime."

"What!?" Sebastian started laughing obnoxiously.

"No offense, Natt," Archie started, barely able to contain his own laughter, "But isn't that show for little girls?"

"Anybody can enjoy an anime as good as Sailor America," Natt continued, shrugging off their laughter, "My little sister used to be obsessed with that show. She didn't even know it existed until some neighbor boy named Lukas came over to babysit her. I guess he was a huge fan. Anyways, ever since she first saw, we've been watching it together. Really good stuff."

"Whatever man," Sebastian waved him off, "That's so embarrassing."

"Make fun of me all you want, but if you'd actually give it a chance, you'd see what I mean. Anyways, it looks like we're here."

Natt gestured out the glass before him, showing that there was a mass of underwater mines scattered about, each of them looking to be full of danger. Not far away from them was Chef, who was patiently waiting for their arrival. Through a small hatch in the back of the submarine-like vehicle, the four non-pilots swam out, leaving their pilots in there as they swam over to Chef.

"Looks like you maggots are finally here," the co-host smirked, "I was starting to get bored of waiting for you."

"Save it, old man," Sebastian interrupted him, "Just tell us what our challenge is so we can win it."

"That cockiness is gonna be your downfall," Gretchen glared at the boy, who ignored her entirely.

"Would you worms be quiet!?" Chef growled at them, quickly hushing them up, "I'm trying to explain your dang challenge to you, but all you want to do is argue! I swear, Chris should've just had the finalists do the whole thing on their own, it would've been eighty times quieter. Anyway, you see this massive field of mines behind me? Well, you're gonna be swimming through the minefield to get to the finish line on the other side. They do explode, but not with enough pressure to damage the suits you're in. Trust me, Chris made me swim right into a few of them already."

"The physics of this show gets further and further from reality every day," Liz mumbled.

"You're pilots will stay in their ships, blasting away at mines to try and cause too much mayhem for the other team to handle. The first pair to cross the finish line will win the point for this planet, now get to your starting positions!"

As Chef shouted at the group, the four of them swam on over to the beginning of the minefield, each gulping in fear as they saw just how expansive it was. Archie and Sebastian shared a worried glance while Gretchen tried to keep her confidence high, though Liz was trembling in her suit.

"Now...ready...steady...go!"

With his word, the four of them started off into the field, with Damien and Natt trailing close behind in their ships.

Confessional

"These challenges are getting more and more dangerous by the minute," Archie muttered, his face full of fear, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that Chris was trying to kill us...actually, you know what? That's probably what's happening right now."

"Who does Chris think he is, letting us go through a minefield like this?" Gretchen asked with a glare on her face, "Ugh, he makes me so...angry sometimes!"

Confessional End

Sebastian huffed and puffed as he swam, full steam ahead through the mines, trying to dodge each and every one he came by, though Damien seemed to be targeting the ones near him, blowing them up rapidly and causing the boy to be thrown off of his path several times.

"Would you quit it and go after Archie for once!?" Sebastian turned to wave his fist at the ship behind him, "I feel like you're going after me on purpose!"

"Let me think about it for a second," Damien answered, tapping his fingers together in a pyramid, "Go blow up my best friend, or keep blowing up the guy that thinks every girl is crushing on him? I think the answer is pretty clear cut, bro."

"Oh, you're such a dick."

"Do...do you realize how ironic it is for you of all people to say that?"

"Eat a fat one, dude."

Sebastian turned back on course, continuing to paddle forth as Damien kept chasing him down, allowing Archie to swim through his own path with ease, not bumping into any of the mines nearby, nor having any blown up around him. He whistled to himself as he swam peacefully, while Liz and Gretchen had a much more difficult time with their course. Natt was giving chase to them, blowing up each of the mines around them and knocking them around like a hockey puck on ice.

"I think Natt might be having too much fun with this challenge!" Liz shouted as a mine near her exploded, the shockwave shoving her into Gretchen, who was knocked into a different mine, blowing it up and getting back over to her friend.

"You think!?" Gretchen screamed in fear, "Natt, take it easy, man!"

As the two continued to paddle away, Natt was enjoying his time in the ship all too much, shooting blasts as much as he was turning the steering wheel, laughing dully all the while. He kept going after them, but after a while, he felt his submarine suddenly stop, causing him to look down at the fuel gauge.

"It's still mostly full...what gives?" he asked himself as he tried to put more gas into the ship.

Through the glass, he could see Liz and Gretchen looking back at him, each steadied in the water, just staring at him in an utter motionless silence. He was about to turn on the mic to call out to them, but as he reached for it, a massive orange tentacle slapped against the glass, causing him to fall to his knees in fear. The girls could see the massive Neptuid latching onto the ship, keeping him from moving and trying to drag the ship under.

"Gah!" Gretchen screamed, frantically searching for something to help them, "We have to do something, Liz! What do we do!?"

"I don't know!" Liz answered in fear, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! How is anyone as small as us supposed to take down a massive squid like that!"

"Wait...hang on...I know what to do!"

"Huh?"

"Just trust me!"

Gretchen grabbed Liz's arm, pulling her along as she swam towards a mine just above the ship. The two both ignored the beast beneath them as they paddled on, trying their hardest to save the absolutely terrified Natt. Finally, the girls crashed into the mine, causing it to blow up, knocking them back a bit and forcing the Neptuid to loosen its grip on the ship. Natt quickly boosted forward, out of reach of the monster, and the girls cheered for their small victory.

"Yeah, we did it!" Gretchen hurrahed, though Liz still had a look of shock on her face, "What's wrong?"

"Tentacle," was the the only word that Liz could say as the massive tendril swung at them, striking them and sending them flying through the water.

Archie had nearly reached the finish line, which he could see a teleporter right near, and he smirked, knowing that he was about to get another point. Just behind him, Sebastian was still being chased after by Damien, but luckily, it had led him to get a lot closer to the finish. Just as the poet was about to cross the line, the two girls came flying from out of nowhere, passing it by from the momentum of being stuck by the Neptuid. Archie's jaw dropped in his helmet as he passed the line second, with Damien and Sebastian coming over it soon after. Natt circled back around to join the group, and Chef paddled on over to them.

"Well, look at that!" the co-host spoke up as the pilots came out of their ships, "It looks like Gretchen and her maggot squad have tied up the scores, it's three to three now!"

"Woohoo!" Damien cheered, "Nice job, you guys!"

Gretchen and Liz were still shook from what had just happened, causing Damien to worry for them slightly.

"Guys?"

"They'll be fine," Chef insisted, "Just get going to the next planet quickly, you never know when that monster could come back to put the hurt on you all."

"Monster?" Archie asked, though he suddenly remembered what Chef was talking about, "Oh, crap! Let's go, guys!"

"Agreed," Natt mumbled, rushing through the teleporter first.

The other five followed him, and they soon found themselves in the middle of a sandstorm, with dust blowing into their faces at every possible second. Their fins snapped back into their suits, and they were back to normal once again. Sebastian rose his arms in attempts to block the dust from blasting him in the face, but it was pointless, and he pressure from the storm even pushed him back a couple feet.

"What the hell is this place!?" the boy shouted to his team, who could barely hear him over the chaotic storm.

"What!?" Archie yelled back to him.

"He said he put a shell on a mace!" Natt answered the finalist.

"He likes to melt a big vase!?" Gretchen questioned the boy, "That doesn't even make sense, Sebastian!"

"Hey, I think I see the ship!" Liz piped up, tapping Gretchen on the shoulder and pointing at a large, dark object that they could barely make out in the distance.

"Liz, keep your bowel movements to yourself!" Damien shouted to the scientist, who didn't understand a single word that he said.

With more of the group noticing the object that Liz was pointing at, and a similar one not too far from it, they pressed on through the storm, heading directly towards them until they were able to fully see them. They were sleak and black, looking like your typical UFO from some Hollywood movie. Natt and Damien each rushed up to the doors, pulling them open with all their strength so their teams could get in the ship and out of the storm. Once everybody packed themselves into the ships, the pilots slammed the doors shut behind them. Natt let out an exasperated sigh, slouching down onto the floor.

"What the hell is up with this place!?" Sebastian shouted, wiping the excess dust from his face.

"It's Mars," Natt mentioned, "Back when we were on here before, we didn't even have to worry about the dust storms. But it looks like we've landed right in one of them this time, it's gonna be hard to find our way out of this mess."

"Well, how far away does the thing say the guardian is?" Archie asked.

"Good question, let me check."

Natt walked on over to the pilot's seat, looking down at the gps system to try and see where the person may be and gaining a look of shock as he did so.

"Huh...that's odd."

"What?"

"It says that they're right around here somewhere."

"What?" Sebastian shook his head, "No way, you saw how bad it was out there! There's no way that they're just out chilling in the sandstorm."

"I mean, they damn well could be," Archie suggested, "You know how Chris is, always making people do the dirty work for him."

"You're not seriously suggesting that we should all go back out there and look for them, are you? Come on, Natt! Back me up, it's literally hell out there right now!"

"Sorry, Sebastian," Natt spoke up, rising from his seat and walking back over to the door, "If we don't find this person, we're never gonna get anything done. And the sooner we do, the sooner we move on to the next planet."

Archie and Natt both passed Sebastian by, the latter's jaw dropping as he noticed how willing his team was to go back and face the nasty hostility of the planet. Reluctantly, he joined them, letting out an annoyed groan in doing so. They all worked together to push the heavy door open, allowing the storm to flush in once again, only this time, the other team was standing right outside. Sebastian screamed from seeing them show up out of nowhere, falling back onto his butt while Natt and Archie laughed at them.

"It's not funny!" the boy whined, hopping up from the ground and rubbing his behind, "You would be pissed if I laughed at you for falling!"

"Yeah, whatever, dude," Natt chuckled, "What's up with you guys? Why're you here?"

"Well, funny thing is," Gretchen started, stepping out of the way to reveal Brittany, standing there with here arms crossed, "We found her in our ship."

"Thank god!" Sebastian hollered, "Looks like we don't have to trek out into that wasteland after all! Things really are just working out the best today, aren't they?"

"Who said you don't have to go out there?" Brittany asked, shoving past everyone to step into Archie's ship, "I'm pretty sure I'm in charge of what all of you have to do today, so, like, shut up and let me boss you around!"

"Oh boy," Damien mumbled, "She's gonna be one of those people, isn't she?"

"It's best to just ignore her as much as you can," Liz whispered to Damien, "She was beyond obnoxious on the Playa."

Damien let out a sigh as he and the other members of his team walked into the ship to sit down with the other team and find out what they were going to be doing on the hellish planet.

Confessional

"It's bad enough that I already have to deal with Sebastian," Archie started grumbling to himself, "But Brittany is here!? I barely had to speak to her when she was on the station, and even then she was majorly annoying!"

"Brittany was one of those people here for that challenge with Dana, right?" Gretchen knocked on her helmet, trying to remember the girl, "I have no idea why, but I don't remember seeing her there...like, at all! Weird..."

Confessional End

Brittany sat in the pilot's seat where Natt should've been sitting, taking selfies while the group of six stared at her blankly, waiting to find out what they would be tasked with on this planet. Looking up from her phone for a moment, she noticed that she was being stared at, and rolled her eyes in annoyance.

"Do you people need something?" she asked in a tone that suggested she wanted them to scramble, "Kinda busy here, soooo...like, don't annoy me."

"Shouldn't you be telling us what to do?" Gretchen's eyebrow twitched at the girl's obnoxiousness, "You seemed to be all for it a couple minutes ago."

"Ugh, fiiiiiine. God, you're worse than Margaret and her blathering."

"Margaret?" Liz piped up, an interested look on her face, "Surely you don't mean the Margaret that competed in Mega Mechas, do you?"

"You know about her...but you don't recognize me!? I was in that same season!"

"Uh...um...oh yeah," Damien snapped his fingers with the realization, "You were eliminated first, right?"

"Second!"

"First, second, big whoop," Sebastian scoffed at the girl, "You placed super low either way."

"Sebastian, didn't you get out really early, too?" Archie asked in a taunting voice.

"I think he did, didn't he?" Natt wore a slight grin on his face, with Sebastian sticking his tongue out at him.

"Oh, bite me, you wannabe goths."

As the finalist and his friend snickered at Sebastian's angry remark, Brittany furrowed her brow, growing tired with the fact that they were doing exactly what she was doing to them before: ignoring her.

"Ahem, as I was about to sa-" Brittany was quickly cut off by Gretchen turning to Liz in question.

"Why were you asking about that Margaret girl, anyway?" the finalist asked her friend.

"Hey, I was trying to-"

"Oh, she just intrigues me," Liz cut off Brittany, causing her to stomp her feet in defiance.

"Would you guys-"

"What's so intriguing about her? Wasn't she some mob boss or something?"

"Exactly! I've always thought it would be interesting to meet someone of that high authority. Maybe work some moves on her so she'll toss me a couple favors here and there."

"Quiet!" Brittany shouted, huffing and puffing soon after.

The six contestants all turned to face her, each of them dead silent, having been yelled at so loudly. The girl quickly fixed her posture and cleared her throat, soon glaring at each of them.

"Let me just tell you what to do so I don't have to deal with your nonsense anymore, okay? It's really simple. Out there, there's a mighty dust storm, one that you can't see a damn thing in. However, there is a black crate hidden around somewhere in the storm. These ships have a wind cannon thingy attached to them, but it only works once. The pilot or whatever can use it to clear the dust for a moment to help you look for the dumb crate. The team that destroys the crate will win the point, blah blah blah, I'm sure you get the point. I'll be staying in this ship, I can't take more of that stupid dust."

"Geez, okay," Damien mumbled, showing the offense both he and the others had taken from her harshness. "I'm going to the other ship then. Gretch, Liz, good luck out there."

"Thanks, Damien," Gretchen patted the boy on the back before he headed to the door, leaving everyone behind in the ship.

The finalists and their marksmen glanced between each other, with both Natt and Brittany watching them, waiting for them to leave the ship.

"Can you like...go?" Brittany rolled her eyes at the four of them, "Challenge is kinda underway."

"Fine, nasty lady," Sebastian mumbled as he led the group out of the ship and back into the harsh, dusty storm.

Archie shut the door behind everybody, and soon enough, the ship lifted off of the ground, with Damien's soon following in suit. It seemed as if the storm was getting worse and worse by the moment, with all of the dust slamming against the glass of their helmets much more vigorously than before. Gretchen turned to look at Liz, who looked up at her in response, nodding quickly before starting off in one direction while Sebastian and Archie took another. The area that the boys had headed to was incredibly hilly, with many slopes that they had to climb. With that, and the annoying factor of the sandstorm itself, they found themselves growing tired with the challenge quite quickly.

"Man, why did we have to go this way?" Sebastian whined as he climbed on of the hills, though Archie couldn't hear a word he was saying. "You know, it's rude to not respond to people when they're talking to you."

"Huh?" Archie heard the faint mumbled of Sebastian's voice, "Did you say something?"

"What!?"

"Eh!?"

"What are you saying, man!? Nothing makes sense in this dang storm!"

"I can't tell if you're talking to me or not!"

"Ugh, I can't take this nonsense anymore!"

Sebastian tapped a button on his arm, turning on his microphone, which allowed him to speak to Natt through the suit.

"Natt, clear the damn dust, we can't see or hear a thing down here!"

"Did Archie say that it would be okay to do that?" Natt asked, clearly unsure of the call that Sebastian was making.

"Yeah, yeah, he said it was fine! We need your help to find this damn crate, after all!"

"Alright, I guess that makes sense...I can see your blips on the gps, prepare to be blown away."

Natt reached for a joystick off to the side, one with a label that read "Air Cannon." He moved it around a bit, which caused a cursor to show up on the gps screen. He kept moving it until it was between the two dots that marked his teammates, and then pressed the red button on top of it, causing the cannon to deploy from the bottom of the ship, and fire a powerful gust of wind. The wind struck the sandy ground between Archie and Sebastian, shoving the two back a little, but clearing out the storm from that area, and allowing them to see their surroundings. Indeed, the area that they were in was full of hills and dunes, but alas, the crate was nary to be seen, and Archie ran over to Sebastian, grabbing him by the shoulders and throttling him.

"Why did you tell him to do that!?" the finalist shouted, "We only had one chance to use that cannon, and now it's gone! And the crate isn't even here!"

"Hey man, lighten up a little," Sebastian rolled his eyes at him, "It's not like I smacked you in the face with a frying pan or anything."

"...You think that's funny, don't you?"

"Eh?"

"You've seen the damn burns, don't 'eh' me!"

"Relax, it was just an expression."

"Just an expression my ass! This whole damn challenge, all you've done is make things more and more difficult for me and Natt, who've been trying to do our best to win this thing! You whine, you complain, and you couldn't be bothered to lend a helping hand! God, we're gonna lose this whole thing because of you, and you don't even give a crap. All you care about is your damn self. Maybe show some compassion once and a while, and Haley won't end up leaving your ass for someone who will treat her better! That's right, Jianne told me all about the shit you've been doing while you were down at the resort, everybody knows what a crappy boyfriend you are. If you had any self respect, you'd admit that you're a pompous ass, and break up with her so she can have a chance at dating someone who actually cares about her! Jesus fu**, man!"

Archie shoved Sebastian into the sand, quickly turning away from him and putting his hands on his head, pacing about through the sands. The marksman simply watched his finalist from where he now lay, a shocked look seated upon his face. Slowly but surely, he rose from the ground, walking over to Archie and tapping him on the shoulder.

"What the hell do you want now?"

"...We've gotta get looking for that crate to win this point. Don't get me wrong, I don't like you, but I guess I'm stuck as your teammate, so I'd better do my job. Don't get any funny ideas about this, though."

Sebastian turned away from his partner, dashing off into the distance quickly, his blaster ready to fire at any given moment. Archie let out a sigh of relief, a small grin flashing under his helmet as he ran after him.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he mumbled to himself.

As the two boys continued their search for the crate, Liz and Gretchen were having the same amount of difficulty with finding it on their own. The path that they had taken was full of uneven ground, and they found themselves slipping around and hitting their toes on slight elevations constantly.

"Ugh, I've had enough of this planet already," Gretchen griped, "I wish we could just move on to the next one already."

"Is that anyway for a finalist to think?" asked Liz, who was right beside the girl so that they could speak, despite the storm's loudness.

"Man, I'm stoked to be in the finale and all, but this particular part of it is just driving me bonkers, ya know?"

"It's not that bad. I think Neptune was a little bit worse than this."

"At least we got through with that one pretty quickly. It feels like we've been wandering around for half an hour already, and I don't have a damn clue as to where that box could be."

"Do you wanna have Damien clear the dust? That could help us out, and make him be of use for once."

"You are so snarky, little lass."

"Well? Are we doing it or not?"

"Fine, fine," Gretchen nodded, pressing a button on her sleeve, "Hey, Damien! Need you to fire that cannon, we can't see anything down here!"

"Oh, okay!" Damien cheerfully answered the call in the ship, placing his hand on the joystick, "Just give me one second here..."

The actor wiggled the stick around, aiming the cursor on the screen, ever so slightly away from the two girls so as not to hit them with the blast of air. He pressed the button on it, confident in his placement of the cursor, and the cannon burst out of the ship, firing the massive gust at the ground. Though his goal was to keep the girls from getting blown away, the spot that he had aimed the cannon at was to the side of them, and as such, when the air came down, it blasted them off to the side even further. They were pushed back into a different part of the storm while the one area cleared up, revealing the black crate in the dead center of it, and Sebastian and Archie staring right at it.

"Damien, you imbecile!" Liz shouted through her microphone, "You knocked us back into the damn storm!"

"Oh, I'm sorry! I was just trying to not hit you guys-"

"You're an idiot, you know that!? Because of you, me and Gretchen have no idea where we are, and the boys are probably gonna find the crate now!"

"Liz, it's not his fault," Gretchen spoke up, putting her hands on Liz's shoulders, though the scientist shoved them off.

"It is his fault! He's been messing up this entire time! At least I started doing better, his only accomplishment came from an accident!"

"Liz!"

"...I'm sorry," Damien mumbled, "I was just trying to help..."

"And it looks like Archie and Sebastian have destroyed the crate," Brittany's voice called through all of the suits, "Yippee, we're gonna land now so we can all leave this mess of a planet."

"Well, look what good your help did for us," Liz said coldly, causing Damien to look down at his feet in shame.

The two pilots landed their ships in the cleared area around the destroyed crate, the landing causing even more of the dust to clear. Gretchen and Liz made their way over as the pilots, and Brittany, came out from their ships, Damien continuing to look at the ground solemnly. Liz glared at him the whole time, while Gretchen patted him on the back again.

"It's alright, dude," Gretchen tried to reassure him, "Mistakes happen."

"But they only need one point to win, now," the boy whispered under his breath, "It's my fault."

"Yeah, yeah," Brittany chimed in, shoving the boy aside as she set a box on the ground, which opened up into a teleporter, "It's four to three, Archie is leading right now. Run along to your next planet so he can win this thing already."

"You're so obnoxious," Natt mumbled, "I can't imagine why Chris is letting you in on this finale."

"Because, lame-o, I'm pretty and rich! A-duh!"

Archie and his team glared at Brittany as they walked on through the teleporter, with the other team slowly following behind, Liz's eyes burning a hole into the back of Damien's head. After they passed through, they found themselves standing on, what seemed to be, a massive chunk of rock, floating along in a massive lane of others just like it.

"Alright, where the hell are we now?" Sebastian groaned, looking over at Natt for an answer.

"Hm...well, if you look to your right," Natt spoke in a condescending tone, "You'll see the massive planet that we all know and love as, Saturn!"

The group glanced to the right, as Natt had instructed them to, indeed seeing the planet in all its glory. It really was a beautiful sight, one that they had all yet to lay their eyes upon, considering that they never had a challenge on Saturn. A look to the left revealed more and more massive chunks of rock, debris, and ice, which they soon identified as the rings of the planet.

"I've been meaning to ask this for a while," Archie spoke up, "Why do you know so much about planets? I mean, this one was obvious, sure, but you knew all of the others just by looking at the area around you. It's honestly kind of impressive."

"Oh, well...I've always been interested in space. It's been a dream of mine to be able to wander among the stars, and being able to actually do it has been amazing. I've been wanting to share my knowledge on everything, but I didn't want to sound like a know-it-all. You know how it goes."

"Well, at least somebody around here has some semblance of a brain for the scientific field," Liz grumbled.

"Liz, I've just about had it with you and your nasty attitude," Gretchen growled at her friend, startling the others, "We're all here to have fun, and you keep going after everybody left and right! What's your deal?"

"My deal? I just want you to win, is that so bad?"

"But winning isn't everything! You've been insulting Damien this whole time, and all he's been doing is try to help us! You're not even the finalist, so I don't see why you should be so concerned with who wins what! If I didn't know any better, I'd think the only reason that you care is because you want some of the money!"

"Well, what if that is the only reason I care?"

"...Then I don't see why you and I should even consider ourselves friends."

"Oh, come on. It makes sense to me, any of you would want a part of the money if I was the finalist and you were on my team."

"No...because not everyone here is like you, Liz. We've all got our own reasons for being here, and I know for damn sure that the money comes second to enjoying myself."

"Whatever. What about you four? Surely you all care about the money."

"The money is nice," Sebastian mumbled, "But...I honestly was just hoping I could get a girlfriend! Guess I got what I wanted already!"

"Yeah," Archie joined the conversation, "My mom told me to join so I could open up a little and make some friends...I did that, and that's all that matters."

"As I've said," Natt butted in, "I wanted to experience space, to be where my heart belongs. And...meeting Anne, and everyone else...it's been better than I could've ever imagined."

"I just wanted to try and expand my horizons," Damien sheepishly added, "And I did...I guess..."

Liz looked around at the five people surrounding her, each of them staring directly at her. She let out a slight chuckle, shaking her head at all of them.

"You guys are all ridiculous, you know that?" the scientist started to cackle in between her words, "You honestly think I'm going to believe any of that for a second? People come here for the money, we betray others, we prey on people that we know we can be better than, and we do it all for a chance to win that cash prize. There is no way in hell that you guys came here for anything but the money, I won't believe that string of bullshit for a damn second!"

"Well, that's fine with us," Gretchen hissed, "Boys, let's just move along to try and find the ships or the guardian, I've had enough of listening to Liz's crap for one day."

The boys remained silent, but as Gretchen started to hop to other rocks nearby on the ring, they followed in suit, eventually leaving the short girl behind. She glared at them as they got further away from her, and crossed her arms in her fury.

"Fine! Go on, leave me here on this planet! But you know, you're never going to be able to live this down! I hate all of you, do you here me!? All of you!"

Confessional

"Friends?" Liz scoffed, "Who needs friends in a game like this? What? Don't look at me like that, just because I've had some moments of weakness that Gretchen has helped me out of doesn't mean that I need her for anything! If anything, she's been holding me back from doing the best that I can! I could've easily been in this finale instead of her, the only reason I'm not is because she's weak! They all are!"

Confessional End

After what seemed like an endless amount of walking, the group of, now five, had found themselves standing on a chunk of rock that floated before a massive platform, one that seemed to be entirely made of metal. On it, there stood the strange man from before, the one with the mostly tan space suit. He stood with his arms crossed, seeming to be leaning against...literally nothing, and perhaps even being asleep as he leaned. Near him, there was a teleporter portal, though, unlike the ones that the group was familiar with, the portal was red in color, rather than blue. One by one, they hopped onto the platform, slowly approaching the man, and waiting for a response. After a moment of waiting, they heard a faint snore coming from under his helmet, and Sebastian let out a groan in annoyance.

"Come on, man!" he shouted, walking on over to the man and tapping on his helmet's glass, "You're in charge of one of the final two challenges, and you're asleep!? That's so lame!"

"E-eh?" the man yawned loudly, raising his arms as he did, and causing Sebastian to take a few steps back from where he was, "Huh? Who in the heck are ya fellas?"

"Uh...the finalists?" Archie said, questioningly, "You know, that you're supposed to be telling about a challenge or something."

"...Ah, right!" the man slapped his left hand against the glass of his helmet, "I can't believe I let that darn near slip my mind, I can be a bit of a klutz sometimes. Where are my manners? My name is Harry Jett, though, if ya would call me Dr. Jett, that would be mighty kind of ya."

"Well, nice to meet you, Dr. Jett," Damien weakly greeted the man.

"The pleasure's all mine, fellas! I've been stuck up here, waiting for so long to share this with y'all, it's been a real bore! Ya see, I'm the man behind the teleporters! That's right, I designed and invented them all on my own! Toss in a little mass production, and that's how they came to be so important for all of y'all on the show!"

"You did!?" Gretchen's eyes lit up with excitement, "That's awesome, man!"

"Why, thank ya, little miss. See, Chris knew he was gonna be needing an easier way to travel between all the planets, but he didn't know how to make it possible! That's where I came in! I've always been a fan of the show, so getting the opportunity to come and help with this whole shindig really did warm mah heart!'

"I bet the company paid you a lot to do this," Natt added in.

"Actually, I refused any form of payment! It's not about the money for me, it's moreso about doing what's right! This was a goal of mine, and it helped that fella get his show all straightened out, so it seems to me like it's a win-win situation!"

"Wow, I guess it really is only Liz who's doing it for the money," Sebastian chuckled, "Well, and Tony I guess."

"Hey, Dr. Jett?" Archie called the man's attention, "What's up with the teleporter behind you?"

"Eh? What's the matter with it?"

"It's a different color than the rest of the ones we've seen...aren't they usually blue?"

"Now that you mention it," Damien looked closer at the portal, "It is different, isn't it? Is it special or something?"

"Yes, actually!" Harry piped up, sounding excited to share what it was to them, "Ya see, the blue ones are your standard place to place teleporters. They make it easy to move things over to one spot to another! Now, the red ones are a much higher power level than the blue ones. What's so neat about them, is that they will not only send ya from point a to point b, but it'll also send ya flying! Ya get a nice boost after you exit it, and it can make for some pretty hilarious wipeouts. That's why Chris wanted me to use one of them, sorry fellas."

"Typical Chris," Natt grumbled, "That sounds like some crap he'd pull. So, what's our challenge?"

"Oh, ya don't have to worry yer little heads about no challenge, this one is just a freebie!"

"Huh?" the group joined in confusion, causing the man before them to let out a holler of laughter.

"Yeah, Chris had something planned for this planet, but he's changed his mind! The last planet is the only one with a challenge left on it, and since it's four to three, he said it would be fine for y'all to just take the win based on that last one!"

"Really?" Gretchen asked, sounding slightly irritated, "I mean, that kinda kills all the fun in the finale, but again, it does sound like something that Chris would do. So we're just gonna get launched as soon as we go through the teleporter, right?"

"Yup, yer gonna wanna brace yerselves for impact. It'll hurt an awful lot if ya just let yerself go flying into a rock or something like that."

"Well alright, if you say so. Once again, it was nice meeting you, Dr. Jett."

"Ditto to that, kids."

The man stepped aside, allowing the five contestants to have a clear path to go to the teleporter. As Gretchen shrugged, she started towards it, with the other four trailing behind her. She got closer and closer to it, but once she was only about a foot away from it, she suddenly stopped.

"Don't step foot through that teleporter," a voice called to her, inside of her helmet.

"What the...who are you?"

"Kuku, I'm sure you all may've seen me a while back! I believe I did take Thomas to his escape pod before we all left!"

"...Oh...ah! You're the lady that Dana was talking about, Maggie!"

"Bingo, bingo, bingo! And you, Gretchen, are on my good list, since you were so kind to little Dana. That's why I just saved your life!"

"Saved my life, what are you talking about?"

The man started growing impatient as Gretchen held up the line, and even the four others had no idea who she was talking to, or what she was talking about.

"You all noticed that the teleporter before you was red, didn't you? I'm sure he told you it meant nothing horrible, but that is so not the case! That device is technically a teleporter, yes...but not one that you want to step through! The red portal, or a 'death gate,' as Jay called it, sears your skin when it touches you! If you step through it, you'll be left with horrible third degree burns! Hell, they might even kill you!"

"W...what?"

"I know, I know! It's absolutely terrifying! I'm gonna let you all in on a little secret-"

Maggie suddenly tapped into the feeds of all six contestants that were on the planet, including Liz, who was still travelling along the rings all by herself.

"That man, is not Harry Jett. He did invent the teleporters, this is true, but his real name is Jay Harett: renowned criminal known best for trying to kickstart his own armada of WMDs to rule the world! He's not here to help any of you, he just wants to kill you all and then, he'll kill Dana. That's his goal here. So, would you all mind doing me a little favor, and kick his ass while I try to fix the teleporter? I can hack it from here, but I'm gonna need some time!"

"Alright...I guess we can try," Gretchen looked over at the others around her, each of them seeming absolutely terrified by what was just said to them, "Guys...I know this is scary...but if we're all gonna die otherwise..."

"Die?" the man chuckled to himself, "What are ya on about, missy? Nobody's gonna die! Just go through the teleporter!"

"Jay...Jay...you were also in that mech season, weren't you?" Archie asked, trembling in his suit.

"Jay...heh, been almost half a year since somebody's called me that. Alright, ya got me, kiddos! That's me alright, not much use in trying to hide it, anyhow. I'm sure ya would've figured it out by the time ya heard the vanishing scream of the first person to walk on through there. But, ya see, there is one slight problem for ya now...what are ya lily-livered wimps gonna do to me that I can't do to ya, ten times worse?"

"Urk," Damien gulped in fear, stumbling back a bit before falling onto his rear, "I don't know about this guys...I mean, he looks really dangerous."

"What's so bad about him?" Sebastian scoffed, taking a step towards the man, "I bet you I could knock him flat in ten seconds, tops."

"Oh, well that sure would be a sight to see, wouldn't it?" Jay chuckled, "Go ahead, I'll let ya get a good hit in on me before I even do anything to ya."

"Ha, someone's eager to get his ass beat!"

Sebastian continued towards the man, with the other four all watching him in fear, worried for his sake, something that they all never thought they'd be able to say. The boy chuckled a little, winding up his right arm really good and hard before sending it cascading into Jay's chest, immediately causing a loud cracking sound to echo throughout the space. His eyes widened immediately, and he pulled his hand his hand back, holding it with his other hand and falling to his knees, screaming out in pain.

"Haha, that bit always get's them really good! What was that about knocking me down in ten seconds?"

"Y-you...what are you!?"

"I am nothing but the cold, bitter truth that humanity needs. By the way...yer ten seconds are up."

"Huh?"

Without wasting anymore time, Jay sent a knee into Sebastian's helmet, both cracking the glass on it ever so slightly and sending him flying back, only for him to be quickly caught by Natt.

"Sebastian!" Damien, Archie, and Gretchen all called out his name in fear as they saw it happen.

"Oh shit, oh shit," Natt mumbled to himself when he looked at the helmet.

He could see the crack, and Sebastian gasping for the minimal amount of air that was flowing out of the helmet. Doing the only thing that he could think of, he held his hand up against the crack firmly, sealing it from the outside and keeping more of the air inside for him to breathe.

"You son of a bitch," Damien growled, surprisingly rising up to his feet and rushing past the others, right towards the man.

Jay sighed as the actor approached him, and before he could do anything to him, the man grabbed the boy by the arm, spinning him around in a circle before launching him into the empty space. Damien screamed as he started to float away, though Jay aimed a strange looking gun at him, firing it once and causing the boy's gravity to amp up, slamming him right back down on the platform that they all stood on.

"Come on, y'all are being really boring today. Do something exciting! Make this worth my while! Heck, that Buck kid put up more of a fight than the lot of ya."

Gretchen and Archie grabbed for their laser swords, turning them on and pointing them at the man, who simply scoffed in response. Grabbing another tool from his suit, one that looked like a glow stick, he snapped it in half, causing it to split into two evenly lengthed laser blades.

"Ya wanna do a laser fight? Alright then, let's do a laser fight! Though...I'm sure y'all will find mine to be a bit more dangerous than yers."

The finalists gulped as Jay cackled even more than before, rushing at them and swinging the two blades, each aimed at one person. They both attempted to block the lasers with their own blades, but his cut right through them, causing them to turn off immediately. He pointed his lasers directly at the two of them, and they both fell to their knees in defeat. Sebastian was in critical condition, Natt was trying to save his life, Damien was in tremendous pain laying on the floor, and now, the two finalists who had worked so hard to make their way to the end of the show found themselves helpless to the man that they had never even done anything to.

"Giving up so soon?" Jay scoffed, "Y'all ain't worth yer salt if ya don't wanna try to put up a better fight than this?"

"Why are you doing this!?" Archie shouted up at the man, "We don't even know you, and you're here, trying to kill us!"

"Because...it's fun? I don't know what ya want me to say to that, ya goofball. I'm just having a good time, is all."

"Don't you have a family or something!?" Gretchen yelled, feeling a pure form of anger, "What would they think of this!?"

"Psh, I had a wife down in Texas named Janice, and a little boy named Ivan. I ain't even seen that boy since he was three, I reckon he's about yer age now. Why should I care about what either of them think? They aren't willing to change the world like me."

Archie and Gretchen both looked down at the ground before them, out of ideas as to what they could say to try and change the man's mind.

"Well, if yer all done, I think it's high time I just kill the lot of ya and-"

Out of nowhere, the man seized up, suddenly falling to the ground in between the two finalists, causing the laser swords in his hands to burn through the platform and sink into the depths of space. They both got up, immediately shuffling away from him and noticing that Liz was standing on the platform now, with her blaster fixed on him. She continued to fire laser after laser at him, resetting his stunned period over and over again before Gretchen and Archie ran over to Damien to check on him.

"Are you softies alright?" the scientist asked, taking a break from blasting to check on them, "I heard everything over the microphones."

"Yeah...we're fine," Gretchen mumbled, "I can't believe you came back to us..."

"Why would I let my friend get killed by some crazy man?"

"Gah!" Jay shouted, leaping up from the ground, "Ya little bitch, I can't believe ya pulled such a dirty little trick on me! Ya know what, forget this! I can just go kill the brat and change the teleporter back so none of ya can follow me! It'll be either burn to death, or get stuck out in space for the rest of yer miserable lives."

He pulled a small remote from his suit, tapping the button on it and causing the teleporter to turn blue. He snickered to himself as he walked over to it, all of the conscious contestants glaring at him all the while.

"Sayonara, assholes!"

Just as he stepped his foot into the teleporter, the color suddenly shifted back to red, and he felt a searing pain. The contestants watched in horror as he passed through the gate, screaming a horrible scream all the way. Soon after, the color changed back to blue, and the feedback system in the suits piped up.

"That hack took me a while, sorry 'bout that!" Maggie butted in, "Looks like you all survived, too, which is pretty neat! The only reason that you all made it out alive is because of little Liz and her fine marksmanship, too! I'd say that warrants a point for team Gretchen, all things considered! Now, I know you're all eager to get to the final challenge...but Damien and Sebastian are out for the count! Natt, Liz, why don't you bring them through the teleporter? It'll lead them to the infirmary on the space station, where our finest med-bots will tend to them. That's right, finalists...you'll be taking on the last planet on your own!"

Liz looked over at Gretchen again, who was looking down at the ground, pondering what had just happened to them Archie walked over to Natt, kneeling down to Sebastian. The boy looked up at the finalist and the one who was tending to him, coughing a little bit.

"Ah, I made a fool of myself, didn't I?" Sebastian asked, weakly.

"No, man," Natt mumbled, "Don't say that...you did what any sane person would've done."

"Heh, come on...don't lie to me. I know I looked like a freaking idiot, going down so quickly."

"No," Archie assured him, "You were a badass. This is the only time I'm gonna say that to you, so don't expect to hear it again."

"Hehe...sweet."

"Natt...Sebastian...it's been fun having you two with me for this challenge."

"Glad to help," Natt smiled faintly before lifting Sebastian up, struggling to keep the crack covered as he carried him, "Come on, bud, let's bring you back."

"Archie, you better win this thing, you knuckle head," Sebastian chuckled as Natt carried him through the teleporter, leaving the finalist by himself while the other team was still saying their goodbyes.

"I don't get it, Liz," Gretchen thought about it for a moment, "We argued like that, and you still came back to save us all. Why?"

"Don't ask me, I don't have an answer for you," Liz rolled her eyes as she struggled to lift Damien up, "All I know is that something in my mind was telling me that I had to do this...so let's just leave it at that, okay?"

"...Fine by me."

"Now, come on ya big lug, let's get you back to the station."

"Ugh...everything hurts," Damien groaned.

"Yep, I'm sure it does."

Liz slowly walked towards the teleporter, hoisting the boy up as best as she could as she did. Right before she went through it, she stopped, suddenly. She turned back to face Gretchen again.

"Gretch...win this finale. I know you can do it."

"Okay...I will..."

"Good."

With that, Liz walked on through the teleporter with Damien in her arms, and it was only the two of the finalists left on the platform. They approached the teleporter, standing before it and waiting for Maggie to continue talking to them.

"Welp, I'm back again!" Maggie chimed into their suits, "Looks like your friends made it back alright, so that's good. I'm calibrating the teleporter back to its set destination, so it'll take you all to Jupiter, your final destination! I hope your ready, cause Dana is waiting there for the both of you!"

"Thanks, strange lady," Gretchen said with a smile.

"Ugh, don't get mushy with me! Just go through the teleporter and do your dumb challenge already!"

Maggie cut the feed to the suits, revealing herself in the room with Thomas once again. She closed her laptop, setting it aside and wiping the sweat from her brwo as the assassin laughed at her.

"Looks like somebody's got a soft side," he joked.

"Oh, come on, silly! Dana's a good kid, I'd do anything to protect her. I'm sure you can understand that."

"Sure, sure. I get it."

"Now...I'm beat. You wanna snuggle for a bit before things get really loud?"

"Snuggle? Bah, I'm an assassin. I don't snuggle."

"...I see."

"...I'm kidding, okay? But...we're still not dating...yet."

"Eeeee! You said yet!"

"Yeah, yeah, don't let it cloud your head."

Meanwhile, back on the platform, the two finalists glanced over at each other, each of them ready to find out what the final challenge of the season would be.

"Well, you ready?" Archie asked, grinning at his co-finalist.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Gretchen nodded and grinned back in response.

The two of the stepped towards the teleporter, each managing to walk through at the same time, and ending up in a muddy trench, one that was currently being heavily rained on by a massive thunderstorm. The sky was red, and the rain was rampant, drenching the two of them immediately.

Confessional

"The last challenge of this nine-parter, eh?" Gretchen had regained her confidence, bearing the smile on her face that brought her and many others courage throughout the season, "I wonder what it's going to be like, on a planet like this one. Me and Archie lost our blades against that guy, so I've got no clue what we're supposed to do! Add on to that the fact that we don't have our teammates anymore, and it's a real mystery what may happen to us here."

"This is it, the end of all challenges," Archie grinned up at the ceiling, thinking about his friends and the help he got from them along the way, "I can't say I ever expected to be here, but now that it's actually happening...I'm beyond happy. It's just been the wildest ride you could've possibly imagined."

Confessional End

The two started to walk through the trenches as the rain spat down at them, their space boots stomping prints into the muddy trail. There wasn't much to the area aside from the trench itself, and it was too tall to look over. Gretchen leapt up a couple of times, but it was to no avail.

"Man, how long do you think this trench goes on for, anyway?" the rockstar asked her co-finalist, who kept trudging along as she tried hopping up to the ledge, "Hey, wait up!"

She ran back over to him, catching up quickly and waving her fist at him.

"You're just gonna leave me behind?"

"Well, we both wanna win this, right?" he barely glanced over to her, continuing to walk along the path, "I figure getting to Dana before you might give me some good odds."

"You're being crafty now, eh? Well, I for one can't wait to see what the final challenge for us is! I'm so gonna take you down in it, whatever it is!"

"Oh yeah? You sound really sure of yourself for someone who's about to lose out on five million big ones."

"That must've been what you said to yourself in the mirror this morning."

As the two jested at each other, they couldn't help but chuckle to themselves, thinking about how ridiculous they sounded. They kept going onward, eventually arriving in a pit like arena, one with a closed gate on the other end of it, with a teleporter right behind the bars. As they got to the center of the pit, a similar gate suddenly rose up from the muddy ground behind them, enclosing them in the area and causing both of them to jump in a sudden fear.

"What's going on here!?" Gretchen shouted as she glanced about the arena frantically, "Who locked us in here!?"

"None other than I!" a girl's voice called from over the tops of the pit's walls.

Approaching them slowing, Dana made her presence known, standing above the two with two strange tubes in her hands. She looked at the objects briefly before tossing them down to the finalists, who each grabbed one and recognized the shape immediately. Pressing a button on each of them, a green and a red beam of light emerging from the respective finalist's tubes. Gretchen grinned at hers, waggling it around a little while Archie shook his head in disappointment at her.

"Welcome, finalists, to Jupiter! This is the very last planet in your galactic roadmap, I'm sure you know, so that must mean that the last challenge is surely something to marvel at. Well, I'm here to let you know...that it is! You won't be facing off against each other in this last little game, oh no, you'll be facing off against something else!"

"Something else?" Archie questioned the girl as she laughed obnoxiously, "What could this something else possibly be? I don't see anything here besides me, Gretchen, and you."

"Oh, just you wait, it hasn't quite arrived yet. See, the goal of this last challenge is simple. You both have one target to go after with your sabers. The finalist who knocks out said target will win the point, and therefore, the challenge and the five million dollar prize! Makes sense to you guys, right?"

"Sure does!" Gretchen cheered, "Now, where is this thing? I can't wait to beat it down and win this thing!"

"I'm sure your overconfidence will dwindle once he drops in. I must admit, Chris did well with this challenge, it's not a task that any of you contestants would've ever had an easy time dealing with."

"What makes you so sure?" Archie glared at the girl, "Maybe we will have an easy time dealing with him."

"Oh, are you certain? Very well, I'll let you take a look at him now. Oh, Barney!"

"Barney?" the two finalists questioned the name in unison, both glancing up into the sky that Dana was pointing at.

Coming crashing down like a meteor, a massive, metal cage landed before the finalists, it's door swinging open from the impact of landing on the ground. From within it emerged a massive beast, one that the group knew and remembered well from a challenge long ago. The mighty Sasquatcheuropa, the very same one that had chased all of the contestants off of Europa, stood tall against the finalists, who were both looking up at it in fear. Dana chuckled beneath her helmet, pulling up a lawn chair from behind her and lounging back at it as the finalists looked to her for guidance.

"Come on, you padawans," Dana jested, "Take him down with ease, just like you said you would before. I'm eagerly waiting for it to happen."

The beast roared a mighty roar, causing each of the finalists to run away in opposite directions, screaming in fear all the way. It shifted its glance between them, eventually focusing a gaze on Archie and charging at him. The poet, seeing the beast coming towards him, quickly dashed to the side, causing it to crash against the muddy wall. It turned around quickly, growling as mud stuck to its fur.

"Oh, man," Archie mumbled, "He's really pissed off now, isn't he?"

"You think?" Gretchen sarcastically asked the boy, not realizing that the creature was now barreling towards her, "Oh, crap!"

Without a second to spare, the girl slid between the beast's legs, causing it to crash into the opposite wall of where it had just collided. She dashed towards the other wall, meeting up on that side with Archie, who was holding his saber in a defensive position.

"What's our plan, here?" the boy asked as the monstrous animal turned to face them again, huffing a puff of steam from its nose in anger.

"I figure we give the guy the ol' runaround for a little bit. That oughtta tucker him out nice and good!"

"As long as it keeps him off of us long enough to survive, it's fine by me!"

The creature roared again, leaping towards the two before they rolled out of the way, slamming its massive fists into the mud where they were just standing. It turned around to face them again, only to be struck in the face by the blunt power of the dual swinging sabers. It stumbled back a little, but caught its footing, growling even more so than before as the two finalists backed away from it, each with their sabers held firmly in their hands.

"Ooooo!" Dana squealed in excitement, "Nice job you two, a few more good hits like that and you should be able to take him down! I wonder who will be the one to land the final blow?"

"You know, your commentating isn't really making this any less stressful," Archie griped before dashing away from the charging beast once more, swinging his saber at its ankle and knocking it to the ground.

The beast started to push itself off of the muddy ground, but found its hands soon stuck good in the mud. As it tried to pry them from the mud, Gretchen rushed towards it, landing an uppercut on its chin with her saber before jumping backwards and raising the weapon defensively again. The beast growled at her, with multiple bruises now showing on its face. As it now tried even harder to pull its hands out of the mud, Archie whacked it on the back of the head with his own saber, knocking it back down into the mud again. The beast stayed down in the mud this time, not moving a muscle as it lay there, and a shocked look flashed on all three of the nearby humans faces.

"He's out already?" Dana asked, "I thought he would've put up more of a fight than that...that's honestly disappointing."

"See?" Archie tucked his saber way, looking over at Dana while standing victoriously over the creature's body, "You really did underestimate us, this challenge was no problem for us! All it took was a few good whacks and this guy was lights out."

"I guess you're right...well, all that being over with...Archie, you landed the final hit, so-"

Dana was interrupted by an ear-shattering roar spilling from the maw of the beast as it quickly rose from the mud, prying its arms out with ease and snatching the poet from the ground, holding him into the air and shaking him about rapidly. Gretchen's eyes widened at first, full of fear, but an inexplicable sense of courage washed over her, and her wide-eyed look was soon replaced by a fierce glare that a warrior would own.

"Hey, you Monster's Inc. wannabe!" she taunted the beast, drawing its attention towards her and causing it to stop shaking Archie for the moment, "Take this!"

The girl launched her saber at its legs, though it quickly leapt over it, landing back down on the ground and seeming to grin at the girl. However, she was not at all swayed by the grin, as the saber came spiraling back, striking the creatures calves quickly and knocking it down to its knees before it landed back in Gretchen's hand. Dashing towards it, she leapt into the air, whacking the beast in the face with her weapon in such a furious motion that would send anybody to the emergency room. She landed behind the creature, quickly turning to watch it come crashing down into the mud, a massive lump on its forehead. Its grip loosened up on Archie soon after, and he was able to come out of its hand. She walked over to him, patting him on the back as Dana slowly clapped her hands.

"Now...that's what we call a hero moment...the finale's winner for Total Drama: Space Station...is none other than Gretchen O'Niall!"

Archie joined in the slow clapping, wearing a smile on his face as he saw how thrilled the girl before him was. Dana hopped down into the pit, pulling out a remote from her pocket, one which she pressed to cause the gates to descend into the mud.

"Now, let's get you guys back to the space station for a your prize, and a surprise! Haha, funny rhymes."

"Hilarious," Archie said sarcastically, "But in all seriousness...nice job, Gretch. You deserved this."

"Oh, don't think I'm leaving you out of this!" Gretchen grabbed the poet, wrapping her arm around his neck and pulling him in for a hug, "All of my buddies are gonna get a piece of this prize, you included!"

"Leave it to you to do something like that with a massive cash prize. Typical Gretchen...but we wouldn't want you any other way."

The small group of three started towards the teleporter, each of them passing through it to be met by, not only all of the contestants, including Sebastian, who now had his arm in a sling, and Damien, who was being carried by Benjamin like a baby, but also all of the guardians of the area, excluding Jay, of course. Even Maggie stood near the back with Thomas at her side, and Vicente held the two interns by their hair, both of them pouting on the floor. Chris came to the front of the group, shoving a box towards Gretchen with his foot. She took her helmet off first, soon kneeling to the ground to open the box, revealing the cash prize within it.

"Congratulations, Gretchen!" Chris cheered, "But as excited as you are to see that, nothing's going to beat how excited you'll be to see this!"

"Eh?" Gretchen cocked her head as Chris and the crowd of former contestants cleared the way, revealing two men behind them, "...No way! Dad! Patrick!"

She quickly rose to her feet again, running past the money and all of the people in the room, hugging her father and brother tightly. Her father was about half a foot taller than her, and his skin was just as pale with his eyes just as green. His hair was long and brown, going about halfway down his back, and he had a medium length brown beard to match it. He wore a black bandana on his head, one that had graphics of skulls and hatchets all over it, a black tee with white cursive lettering reading "Nothing Else Matters" on it, a black leather vest over that with no sleeves, stonewashed black jeans, a pair of black motorcycle boots, and black fingerless gloves. His appearance could definitely terrify the weak of heart, but he seemed friendly enough, judging by how happy he was to see his daughter. Her brother, on the other hand, wasn't as tall as her father, but still a bit taller than her. He was pale as well, and he had the same green eyes, though his hair was shaven short, still brown in color. He had some slight stubble on his face, but what most stood out was the tattoo on the side of his neck, one which was of a skull with a dagger in its right eye socket. He wore a white tee with a stonewashed, blue, denim jacket over it, and a matching pair of stonewashed, blue jeans, with the same gloves and boots that his father wore.

"Ya really did us proud, little lass!" her father boasted, patting her on the back as she cried tears of joy.

"Come on now, Gretch," Patrick chuckled, "Don't be crying in front of all your friends like that."

"Shut up, I'll cry if I feel like it," she sniffled, pulling them in tighter.

Chris then came to stand in front of them, blocking the view of the camera entirely as it focused on him.

"Well, you've been along for one of the wildest rides in Total Drama history right here. We started with twenty-two, but in the end, only one of them could win the five million dollar prize! I'm Chris McLean, and this...has been...Total...Drama...Space Station!"

Author Notes:

*The season has finally come to its end...kind of. There is one more episode coming along, though it won't be released until the week before the start of Lost City. Now, Gretchen hasn't always been my winner, but Archie has always been my runner-up. Initially, my elimination order had March as the winner, but I wasn't ready for a best buddy finale quite yet. I may do one in the future, but as I went through the story, Gretchen being the finalist and winner made more sense to me than any other contestant.

*Now, I mentioned working on a massive project before, and that is a wiki for all my series! I'll talk about it more eventually, but with all the writing I've been doing, I haven't had much time to work on it. Hopefully I will get some free time.

*Placements: 22nd - Taylor; 21st - Nicolás; 20th - Vicente; 19th - Haley; 18th - Crustacean; 17th - Sebastian; 16th - Damien; 15th - Benjamin; 14th - Jianne; 13th - Dusty; 12th/11th - Luna and Liz; 10th - Natt; 9th - Alex; 8th/7th - Alexis and Thomas; 6th - Anne; 5th - Flint; 4th - March; 3rd - Tony; 2nd/1st - Archie; 1st/2nd - Gretchen

And now, the alternate ending:

The creature roared again, leaping towards the two before they rolled out of the way, slamming its massive fists into the mud where they were just standing. It turned around to face them again, only to be struck in the face by the blunt power of the dual swinging sabers. It stumbled back a little, but caught its footing, growling even more so than before as the two finalists backed away from it, each with their sabers held firmly in their hands.

"Ooooo!" Dana squealed in excitement, "Nice job you two, a few more good hits like that and you should be able to take him down! I wonder who will be the one to land the final blow?"

"Man, you're kind of a little psychopath, aren't you?" Gretchen jokingly asked as she swung her saber at the running beasts legs, tripping it into the mud before her.

The beast started to push itself off of the muddy ground, but found its hands soon stuck good in the mud. As it tried to pry them from the mud, Archie dashed towards it, cracking his saber against its cheek before running past it and turning back towards it in a fierce stance. The beast growled at him, with multiple bruises now showing on its face. As it now tried even harder to pull its hands out of the mud, Gretchen whacked it on the back of the head with her own saber, knocking it back down into the mud again. The beast stayed down in the mud this time, not moving a muscle as it lay there, and a shocked look flashed on all three of the nearby humans faces.

"He's out already?" Dana asked, "I thought he would've put up more of a fight than that...that's honestly disappointing."

"Aw, man," Gretchen scuffed the ground with her foot, "I was really hoping for more of a challenge than that! Boo, you stupid monster, why'd you have to be so weak?"

"I guess you're right...well, all that being over with...Gretchen, you landed the final hit, so-"

Dana was interrupted by an ear-shattering roar spilling from the maw of the beast as it quickly rose from the mud, prying its arms out with ease and snatching the rockstar from the ground, holding her into the air and shaking her about rapidly. Archie's was taken aback immediately, his heart racing as he saw the peril that Gretchen was in, but he stood his ground, a determined gaze finding its way to his face.

"You brutes always think it's cool to pick on the weaker guys, don't you?" Archie gritted his teeth with each word, "Well, not anymore..."

The boyr rushed towards the beast, sliding between its legs, thanks to the slipperiness of the mud, and smashing the saber against the right leg, causing the monster to fall forward, onto its knees. From behind it, he did a twirling leap, flying over its head and slamming his saber against its forehead as he past by, the momentum, immediately knocking the beast backward. It slowly fell onto its back, a new lump rising on its forehead, and slipped into an unconscious state. Its grip on Gretchen loosened up, and she slipped out of its hand, taking a large breath of air now that her lungs weren't being squeezed. Slowly but surely, Dana started to clap for the boy's heroicness.

"Now...that's what we call a hero moment...the finale's winner for Total Drama: Space Station...is none other than Archibald Reed!"

Gretchen chuckled a little bit, clapping her hands together for the boy, who now had a look of uncertainty upon his face. He honestly wasn't sure of what he should do now, but it felt like anything could happen.

"Now, let's get you guys back to the space station for a your prize, and a surprise! Haha, funny rhymes."

"Uh oh, someone's taking inspiration from Anne," Gretchen joked at Dana, "But you did awesome today, Archie! You're a grad A badass!

"A badass, huh?" Archie let out a slight chuckle, "Never thought anybody would ever be calling me a badass, but it feels...kinda nice. I'm really glad I was able to be in this finale with you...maybe I'll even throw a 'party' with some of my money to show some appreciation to you and all the rest of my friends."

"Aw, you're always so sweet, thinking about others before yourself. And you never let life kick you down without getting back up and spitting in life's face! You got a real sick flair about you, Archie!"

The small group of three started towards the teleporter, each of them passing through it to be met by, not only all of the contestants, including Sebastian, who now had his arm in a sling, and Damien, who was being carried by Benjamin like a baby, but also all of the guardians of the area, excluding Jay, of course. Even Maggie stood near the back with Thomas at her side, and Vicente held the two interns by their hair, both of them pouting on the floor. Chris came to the front of the group, shoving a box towards Archie with his foot. He took his helmet off first, soon kneeling to the ground to open the box, revealing the cash prize within it.

"Congratulations, Archie!" Chris cheered, "But as excited as you are to see that, nothing's going to beat how excited you'll be to see this!"

"What are you-" Archie looked up from the money, his jaw dropping as he saw what was behind Chris, "Mom...Dad..."

He was quick to dash from where he was, grabbing his parents and pulling them in close for a massive hug. His father was a lot shorter than he was, with espresso-toned skin and deep, black eyes. His hair was shaven short to his head, being black in color, and he had a neatly trimmed beard and mustache combo that suited him well. He wore a black, turtleneck sweater, though he had on a black, leather jacket over it. He also wore a black pair of cargo pants, with sleak black shoes to finish off the outfit. His mother, on the other hand, was a bit taller than his father, but still not as tall as Archie himself. She had white skin, though it wasn't as pale as Archie's was. She had brown eyes, and medium length brown hair to match. She wore a blue jacket left unbuttoned over a black shirt, which was tucked into a pair of blue jeans and held up by a leather belt. She also had on a pair of black dress shoes. All-in-all, she looked like she was getting ready for an office job of sorts.

"Archie, you did so wonderful in this show," his mother said sweetly, "And I see you've got yourself a girlfriend, now!"

"That's my little man," his dad patted him on the back as the embrace continued.

"Dad, haven't we gone over how ironic it is for you to be calling me the 'little guy?'" Archie jested, barely able to hold back his tears.

Chris then came to stand in front of them, blocking the view of the camera entirely as it focused on him.

"Well, you've been along for one of the wildest rides in Total Drama history right here. We started with twenty-two, but in the end, only one of them could win the five million dollar prize! I'm Chris McLean, and this...has been...Total...Drama...Space Station!"

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A teleporter was left standing in the ruins of Cali-Tokyo, though the portal quickly shorted out from the radiation in the area. It was bad, but the space suits could keep someone from getting radiation poisoning well enough, just as they had out in space. There, crawling around through the rubble, was Jay, who had been dreadfully injured by the death gate.

"Stupid kids," he grumbled to himself, "I'll get my revenge on all of these brats...this human body is so limiting..."

He continued to crawl, and underneath his helmet, a crocodile grin formed on his now burnt face.

"...I think it's time for some upgrades!"

As the camera started to pan away from him, he kept crawling, pulling along bits and pieces from the destroyed mechs that were still in the area. Thinking about what great plans he had for the future, he couldn't help but cackle ominously. In a land that nobody resided in, with no one in the world knowing he was still alive, he had nothing standing in his way.